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MIND FROM CONSCIOUSNESS. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/empiricalpsychol02hick 



EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY: 



THE HUMAN MID AS GIVEN I CONSCIOUSNESS, 



FOR THE USB OF COLLEGES AND ACADEMIES. 



By LAURENS P. HICKOK, D. D. 

UNION COLLEGE. 
AUTHOR OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY, MORAL SCIENCE, ETC. 




SECOND EDITION. 



SCHENECTADY: 

PUBLISHED 131 G. Y. VAN DEBOGERT. 

1855. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, 

BY LAURENS P. HICK0K, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Northern District 

of New-York. 



RIGGS, PRINTER, VAN BENTHUYSEN, STEREOTYPE*. 

Schenectady. Albany. 



PBEFACE. 



It is the design, in the present work, to represent the 
human mind as it stands in the clear light of conscious- 
ness. We go to our own inward experience to find the 
facts, both of the single mental phenomena and of their 
connection with each other. An Empirical Philosophy 
is here alone attempted, and in which we cannot proceed 
according to the order of a pure science. The necessary 
and universal Ideas, which must determine all mental 
activity in every capacity, in order that these capacities 
may become intelligible to us in their conditional laws of 
operation, are not now first assumed, and then carried 
forward to a completed system by a rigid a' priori ana- 
lysis and deduction in pure thought. Such a work has 
already been accomplished in a thoroughly Rational Psy- 
chology. The subjective Idea which must condition and 
expound all Intelligence has been attained, and then the 
objective Law which controls all the facts of an acting 
Intelligence has been determined to be in. exact accord- 
ance. But in this work we wait upon experience alto- 
gether. We use no fact, and no combination of facte, 

1* 



VI PREFACE. 

except as they have already been attained in the common 
consciousness of humanity. It is rather a description of 
the human mind than a philosophy of it ; a psycography 
rather than a psychology; and should not assume for 
itself the prerogatives of an exact science. 

Still, with this renunciation of all claim to a pure 
science, the attempt has been made to find the human 
mind as it is, and all its leading facts as they combine to 
make a complete whole. The aim has been to present 
all the constituent parts in the light of their reciprocal 
adaptations to each other, and to show how all depend 
upon each one, and that each one exists for all, and thus 
to give the mind through all its faculties as a Hying 
unity, complete and consistent in its own organized iden- 
tity. When a system is thus matured from conscious 
experience, having all the symmetry and unity of the 
acting reality, it may be known in a qualified sense, as 
a philosophy, and be termed a science of mind. It is a 
science, as Chemistry, Geology and Botany are sciences ; 
the study of facts in their combinations as nature gives 
them to us, and thus teaching what is first learned by 
careful observation and experiment. It assumes not to 
have found those conditioning principles, which determine 
that the facts must have been so ; but it may and does 
from its own consciousness affirm, that the facts are so. 



PREFACE. VII 

Such a method of studying the human mind should 
precede that which is more purely philosophical, and 
thus more truly metaphysical, and is, perhaps, the only 
method to be attempted in an Academic or a Collegiate 
course. It is universally essential, as a portion of that 
applied discipline which is to prepare for vigorous and 
independent action in all public stations, and cannot be 
dispensed with in any learned profession without detract- 
ing from both the utility and the dignity of the man. It 
equally applies to the full process of Female Education, 
and both adorns and refines while it also expands and 
strengthens. This empirical exercise, thus indispensable 
for every scholar, is also a preparative and incentive to 
the study of the higher Metaphysics in more advanced 
stages of philosophical enquiry. 

The present work has been written with the eye con- 
stantly on the class for whose study it is designed, and 
indeed mainly while the daily instruction with my own 
class was in progress, and the care has been to make it 
intelligible to any student of considerable maturity, who 
will resolutely and faithfully bring its statements to the 
test of his own clear consciousness. No instruction in 
Empirical Psychology can be given by mere verbal 
statement and definition, nor by attempted analogy and 
illustration. If the Teacher does not send the pupil to 



VIII PREFACE. 

the fact as he has it in his own experience, there will be 
either an inadequate or an erroneous conception attained. 
The phenomenon within is unlike any phenomenon with- 
out, and all ingenious speculation and logical deduction 
will be empty and worthless without close and direct 
introspection. "With such habits of investigation, it is 
fully believed that the following delineation of mental 
faculties and their operation will be readily apprehended, 
and consciously recognized as mainly conformed to the 
person's own inward experience. 
Union College, 1854. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. The Difficulties and tendencies to Error 

in the Study of Mind. - - - 13 

ANTHROPOLOGY. The Connections of Mind and Body. 27 

EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

CHAPTER I. General Method. ----- 60 

1. Attain facts. ----- 61 

2. Criterion for disputed facts. - - 64 

3. Classification of facts. - - • - 70 
CHAPTER II. General Facts of Mind. - - - 73 

1. The existence of mind; ... 73 

2. Mind not phenomenal nor ideal. - 75 

3. Mind has perpetuated identity. - 76 

4. Mind is self-active. - 77 

5. Distinguishes itself from its objects. - 79 
CHAPTER III. Primitive Facts of Mind. - 82 

1. Sensation. 82 

2. Consciousness. 88 

3. Capacities for knowing, feeling and willing. 93 

FIRST DIVISION. 

THE INTELLECT. - - - - 111 

CHAPTER I. The Sense. 113 

Distinguishes and defines phenomena. 

Section I. The External Sense. - - - 114 

Observation. - - - 115 

Attention. - - - 116 

Section II. The Internal Sense. 122 

Section III. The Fancy. 125 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER II. The Understanding. .... 127 
Connects qualities in substance, and events in cause. 
Logical connections and intellectual functions. 

Section I. Memory. 132 

Section II. Conception. .... 134 

Section III. Association. - 136 

Section IV. Abstraction. - 140 

Section V. Reflection. 141 

Section VI. Judgment. - 142 

Section VII. Deduction. - 147 

Section VIII. Induction, ... - 149 

Section IX. Imagination. .... 152 

CHAPTER III. The Reason. 155 

Affirms universal and necessary principles. 

Section I. Modifies other Faculties. - - 159 

Section II. Insight and Comprehension. - 165 

Section III. Ideals of Absolute Perfection. - 169 

, Section IV. Genius. 173 

SECOND DIVISION. 

THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. - - - 176 

Definitions. — Instinct, Appetite, Desire, Inclination, Propensity, 
Emotion, Passion, Obligation, Affection. 

CHAPTER I. The Animal Susceptibility. - - - 185 

Section 1. The Instincts. - - - 187 

Section II. The Appetites, - - - - 189 

Section III. The Natural Affections. - - 191 

Section IV. Self-Interested Feelings. - - 193 

Section V. Disinterested Feelings. - - 197 

CHAPTER II. The Rational Susceptibility. - - 200 

Section I. Esthetic Emotions. - - - 201 

Section II. Scientific Emotions. - - 204 

Section III. Ethic Emotions. - - - 207 

Section IV. . Theistic Emotions. - 216 

CHAPTER III. The Spiritual Susceptibility. - • 220 

Section I. Induced in a state of will. - -, 222 

Section II. Varieties of spiritual sentiment. - 226 

Section III. In what manner responsible. - 233 



CONTENTS. XI 

THIRD DIVISION. 

THE WILL. 236 

General Observations. 

CHAPTER I. Complete Conception of the Will. - 241 

Section I. «• Various Conceptions. - 242 

Section II. The true Conception. - - 252 

CHAPTER II. Man has this Capacity of Will. - - 259 

Argument. I. Conscious Responsibility. - - 260 

Argument II. Distinction of Brute and Human Will. 261 

Argument III. Man discriminates his own. - - 263 

Argument IV. Reciprocal Complacency. - - 265 

Argument V. Man can resist Nature. - - - 268 

Argument VI. Consciousness. - 270 

CHAPTER III. Acts of Will discriminated from other 

Acts. - - - - - - - 276 

Section I. From simple Spontaneity. - - 276 

Section II. From the impulse of Appetite. - 278 

Section III. From Desire. - 280 

Section IV. From the Spiritual Affections. - 282 
CHAPTER IV. The Classification of the Acts of the 

Will. 284 

Section I. Immanent Preference. - - 284 

Section II. Governing Purpose. - 286 

Section III. Desultory Volition. - 289 

FOURTH DIVISION. 

MIND COMPETENT TO ATTAIN ITS END. 293 

What the end of the human mind is ; and that it is now lost. 

CHAPTER I. The true conception of Power or Cause. 300 

Section I. Fallacious Theories. - 305 

Section II. The true Conception. - - 313 

Section III. Classification of Varieties. - 315 

'CHAPTER II. The Grounds of Certainty. - - - 322 

Section I. Negative of all Ground : Chance. Fate. 323 

Section II. Positive Ground : Necessity. - 327 

Section III. Possible Ground: Contingency. 333 

Section IV. Different Applications of Certainty. 338 



XII CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. Natural and Moral Inability. - • 342 

Section I. Natural Inability in Necessity. - 344 

Section II. Moral Inability in Self-hindrance, 350 

Section III. Cases where often confounded. 359 

CHAPTER IV. The Human Mind as an Agent. - - 367 

Section I. Man acts as the Animal, - - 368 

Section II. Man acts as Rational. - - 371 

Section III. As both Animal and Rational in one. 372 

Section IV. Objections to Liberty answered. 378 

CHAPTER V. The Competency and Impotency of the 

Human Mind. 386 

Section I. Man's Natural Competency to gain 

his end. 388 

Section II. Man's Moral Impotency to gain his 

end. ------ 393 



INTRODUCTION. 



Psychology is comprehensive of all the necessary prin- 
ciples and the developed facts of mind. The necessary 
principles determine the possibility of an intelligent 
agency, and reveal in the reason how mind must be con- 
stituted in order to any cognition of a nature of things 
as existing in space and time ; and is thus distinguished 
as Rational Psychology. The developed facts of mind 
are taken as they reveal themselves through an actual 
experience in consciousness, and when combined in sys- 
tematic arrangement they give the specific science known 
as Empirical Psychology. It is this last only which 
comes within the field of present investigation. 

Empirical Psychology is thus inclusive of all mental 
facts which may come within human consciousness. The 
being of mind, with all its faculties and their functions ; 
every phenomenon in its own manifestation, and its law 
of connection with other phenomena ; all, indeed, about 
which an intelligent enquiry can be made in reference to 
mental existence and action, come within the province 
where this philosophy should make itself thoroughly and 
familiarly conversant. As an empirical science, it is 
demanded that aU the facts be collected, and that they 

2 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

be orderly arranged according to their known connec- 
tions and dependencies. All that belongs to mind must 
have place, and each element its right place, in the 
system. 

Mental Philosophy has not thus, as yet, attained its 
consummation. All the facts of mind are not probably 
yet found : many that have been attained are not clearly 
discriminated ; and what have been used have never 
appeared in any system with exact order and perfect 
harmony. Much more labor of observation, analysis and 
combination is to be expended on this field, before it can 
be said to be fully in possession, and all its parts com- 
pletely subjected to science. Peculiar difficulties and 
special hindrances he in the way of mental investigation. 
The subject itself is for many reasons obscure, demand- 
ing the most patient and profound study. The most 
subtile analysis and the most comprehensive generaliza- 
tion are at times necessary, and in addition to the acute- 
ness of the perception and the intensity of the thinking 
which are called into requisition, there are various lia- 
bilities to error from certain sources of deceptive bias 
and delusive influence. These operate at the present- 
as they have clone in the past, and a preliminary exami- 
nation of them may best facilitate an entrance upon this 
investigation, and prepare the student the most effec- 
tually to resist all perverting tendencies, and attain the 
truth by holding the facts in a clear light and looking at 
them in the right direction. 

Among the more prominent difficulties and sources of 
error, are — 



LIABILITY TO ERROR. 15 

1. The inverted method of the mind's operation in 
attaining its facts. 

The elements for Empirical Psychology are the facts 
of mind which come -within every man's own experience. 
We may not assume what the facts are from any pre- 
sumption of what they should be, nor take them upon 
trust because others have said what and how they are ; 
we must find them within ourselves, and clearly appre- 
hend them in our own consciousness, or they may prove 
utterly false and thus wholly worthless. Others may 
have observed the same facts, and used them in their 
way in their philosophy, and their statement of them 
may direct our minds to them and greatly facilitate us 
in the attainment of them ; but their descriptions and 
assertions must not be allowed to stand valid, except 
through our own conscious apprehension and conviction. 
A fact, that has not been held in the clear light of my 
own consciousness, can truly be no fact for my philoso- 
phy. All the facts I use must come within my cogni- 
tion, or I can make nothing but a borrowed science out 
of them. 

But, from its first conscious apprehension, the mind 
has been accustomed, in its agency, to turn its attention 
outwardly to the phenomena of nature, and gain its facts 
in the perception of the objects of an external world. It 
has steadied itself in its operations upon the organs of 
sensation, and thus long habit has made it to be easy and 
pleasant for the mind to increase its knowledge, in the 
attainment of new facts through sensible observation. 
The facts we now need lie in altogether another direction, 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

and are to bo gathered from an entirely different field. 
The old habit of throwing the attention outwards is now 
to be broken up, and an entire inversion of the mental 
action is to be practised. The mind is to make its own 
phenomena its study, and turn the attention inward upon 
its own action. It is, as it were, to hold itself out to its 
own inspection, and turn itself round on all sides to its 
own observation. This position of the mind is always at 
first difficult to assume, and the perpetual counteraction 
of its wonted course is ever, hi the beginning, painful to 
sustain. The effort, steadily to look in this unaccustomed 
direction, induces a weariness that destroys the capacity 
for clear perception and patient investigation. Eepeated 
attempts, and decided and perpetuated effort, which shall 
ultimately habituate the mind to give this intro-version to 
its attention, can alone secure that there shall be any 
deep interest and delight in this order of mental opera- 
tion. A fixed and prolonged observation and examina- 
tion of the phenomena of the inner mental world is, on 
this account, the agreeable and chosen employment of 
comparatively very few minds, probably less than one in 
a thousand in our more enlightened communities. 

The perpetual tendency from this is to induce impa- 
tience and haste in the induction of mental facts, and to 
leave the whole philosophy of mind to a superficial exami- 
nation. The assertions of one, hastily made, are taken 
upon trust by others ; specious appearances are care- 
lessly assumed to be veritable realities ; complex opera- 
tions are left unanalyzed, and erroneous conclusions 
drawn from partial inductions ; and then the whole is 



LIABILITY TO ERROR. 17 

put together through the connections of mere casual or 
fancied resemblances ; often even mingling contradic- 
tions and absurdities in the system; thus making the 
result to be a spurious and worthless philosophy. Cer- 
tainly many doctrines, which falsify the very distinctions 
between mind and matter, and the grounds of all respon- 
sibility, and the order of discipline and culture, are left 
to spread themselvts among the people, and influence 
opinion and practice, solely because the common mind is 
unaccustomed to accurately note the daily experiences 
in its own consciousness. 

This difficulty is to be overcome, and the liability to 
error thereby avoided, only by a resolute perseverance 
in overcoming the old habit, and learning the method of 
readily reading the lessons from our own inward experi- 
ence. The organs of sense must be shut up, and the 
material world shut out, and the mind for the time shut 
in upon itself, and made to become familiar with its own 
action. The man must learn to commune with himself; 
to study himself; to know himself; to live amid the phe- 
nomena of his own spiritual being. When this habit of 
intro-spection has been gained, the investigation of men- 
tal facts becomes not only possible, but facile and 
delightful. It should not be anticipated by any student, 
that this difficulty will be overcome without rigid and 
persevering self-discipline ; nor that any satisfactory pro- 
gress will be made in mental science, until this difficulty 
is thus surmounted; but all may be assured that the 
narrow way may be passed into spacious and pleasant 



18 INTRODUCTION. 

fields of truth, by fixing a manly resolution, and persist- 
ing a while in its execution. 

2. The ambiguity of language. 

Language is the outer body of thought. Words, with- 
out thought, are empty ; and thought, without words, is 
helpless. The common speech is thus the outer expres- 
sion of the common thoughts of mankind. Philosophy 
attains the necessary principles, and determines the rules 
for the grammatical construction of language ; but philo- 
sophy does not make nor change language. The working 
of the human mind within determines for itself its own 
outer expression, and, as an inner spirit and life, builds 
up its own body, and gives to it a form according to the 
inherent law of its own activity 

But the great mass of mankind are conversant mainly 
with the objects of the sensible world. They think, and 
thus speak, of little else than those phenomena which 
meet them face to face through the organs of sense. 
Daily experience fixes their habits and limits their men- 
tal action, while few only turn their minds in upon them- 
selves, and think and speak of the facts of their spiritual 
being. The common language of mankind is thus only 
an expression of what they find in their daily experience. 
When man begins to reflect, and philosophize concerning 
himself and nature around him, he needs a new language 
for his new thoughts ; but his first reflection and philoso- 
phizing is about natural objects, and physical science 
occupies his study and opens the way to mental and 
metaphysical investigations. His philosophical terms 
are such still as give expression to his reflections upon 



LIABILITY TO ERROR. 19 

nature, and his whole technical phraseology is readily 
referred, for its interpretation, to the outer objects of 
which it is the symbol, and thus gives little ambiguity, or 
mistake and confusion in apprehending the thought. 
And when mathematical science is studied, the concep- 
tions are pure numbers and diagrams, and can be con- 
structed as pure objects alike by all mathematicians, and 
thereby all mathematical language comes readily to pos- 
sess a definite meaning, and can at once be referred to 
its pure figure as an exposition of the thought, and pre- 
clude all possible obscurity in the apprehension. Physi- 
cal and Mathematical Sciences give little occasion for 
verbal ambiguities. 

But, in mental science, the case becomes quite differ- 
ent. The thought must have its word, and the science 
its philosophical phraseology ; but the thoughts, as ele- 
ments of mental science, are quite peculiar — even 
thought itself, and all the inner faculties and functions 
of a spiritual existence. The word, as symbol, cannot 
be explained by any reference to sensible objects, but 
must carry its meaning over to another mind, only by 
inducing the conception of the same mental fact in his 
own consciousness. All these distinct and peculiar men- 
tal facts call for their expressive terms in language, and 
the science of mind cannot proceed until the words for 
mental phenomena are appropriated. To give to all 
these new thoughts entirely new words, would be labori- 
ous in the invention and burdensome to the memory. 
The mind naturally and readily accommodates the lan- 
guage, already appropriated to sensible objects, in appli- 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

cation also to these inner spiritual phenomena. Where 
there was apprehended some striking analogy between 
the outer and the inner fact, the word for the outer was 
used also by accommodation of meaning for the inner, 
and thus often the same word came to possess its two 
meanings ; one in reference to the physical, and the 
other to the metaphysical world of thought. The mind, 
though wholly spiritual, unextended and illimitable by 
any of the forms of space, is thus said to be fixed or to 
wander, to be dull or acute, narrow or comprehensive. 
The names for tangible qualities in nature are also trans- 
ferred to the intangible characteristics of the spirit, and 
the feelings of the human soul are said to be frigid or 
ardent, lax or intense; and the heart cold or ivarm, 
hard or tender ; and the will to be firm or toeak, stable 
or flexible; according to such supposed resemblances. 
The mind as well as matter has its inclinations and 
impressions ; and many words taken from the outer come 
at length to have an almost exclusive application to the 
inner ; as disposition, induction, conclusion, abstraction, 
etc. Very many words in all languages have thus their 
primary and secondary significations ; and in the science 
of mind we are perpetually thrown back upon the analo- 
gies of matter. Ambiguous words and equivocal expres- 
sions repeatedly occur, and thus a constant liability is 
induced to mistake and confound things which greatly 
differ. The thought is widely misapprehended, in the 
illusion from the two-faced symbol that conveys it. 
Sturdy controversies have been often mere logomachies ; 



LIABILITY TO ERROR. 21 

the philosophy alike, and only the phraseology differently 
apprehended. 

The errors from this source are to be avoided, not by 
excluding all such ambiguities, which will be wholly 
impracticable, but by universally bringing the fact within 
the light of consciousness. By whatever symbol the 
mental fact may be communicated, the conception must 
be known as that of some phenomenon within us, and 
not some quality from the world without us. The ana- 
logy must not be permitted to delude, but the fact itself 
must be found amid the conscious elements of our own 
mental experience. The truths we want in psychology 
are not to be sought in the heavens above, nor in the 
depth beneath ; but they are nigh us, even in our own 
being, and amid the hourly revealings of our own con- 
sciousness. 

3. Inadequate conceptions of mental being and devel- 
opment. 

The complete conception of a plant includes far more 
than its sensible phenomena of color, shape, size and 
motion; or that of all its separate parts of stock, 
branches and leaves. It must especially include its vital 
force as an inner agency which develops itself in a pro- 
gressive and orderly growth to maturity. This is widely 
different from all conceptions of mechanical combinations, 
in winch the structure is put together from the outside, 
according to some preconceived plan of arrangement. 
There is, both in the plant and the machine, the concep- 
tion of some law of combination, and in this a rational 
idea which expounds each its own structure ; but hi the 



22 INTRODUCTION 

plant it is that of an inner living law, spontaneously 
working out its organic development, "while in the 
mechanism it is an artificial process for putting dead 
matter together. The former conception is far more 
difficult adequately to attain than the latter. 

The conception of animal life and development rises 
quite above that of the vegetable, and includes the super- 
added forces of an appetitive craving, an instinctive 
selection of its peculiar food, with the faculty of locomo- 
tion to bring itself to it ; and the capacity for mastica- 
tion, digestion, assimilation and incorporation into its 
own substance, and thus a growth in the whole system 
of the body and its members. Superior in degree, in 
man, is the faculty of judging from sensible experience, 
and thus acting from the dictates of prudence ; and the 
distinctive and far more elevated endowment in kind of 
rational faculty, in its artistic, philosophic, ethic and reli- 
gious capacities, gives to Mm the prerogatives of action 
in liberty and moral responsibility, thereby lifting him 
from the bondage of all necessitated things into the 
sphere of personality. All this complexity of superin- 
duced faculties, from mere vital force up to rational 
being, has its complete organic unity, constituting but 
one existence in its own identity, and its own inner spirit 
works out a complete development of the whole, through 
all the manifestations of growth and mature activity. 
One life pervades the whole, and one law of being 
makes every part reciprocally subservient and accordant 
with all other parts. 



LIABILITY TO ERROR. 28 

If then, an adequate conception of merely vegetable 
organism, as distinct from the combinations of mechan- 
ism, be difficult to attain, how greatly is the difficulty 
augmented in attaining the full conception of humanity 
with all its included capacities and exalted prerogatives ! 
From these inadequate conceptions of humanity, must 
necessarily originate very faulty systems of psychology. 
All resting in the analogies of mere mechanical combina- 
tions and movements must be "widely erroneous ; and 
any failure clearly to discriminate between the animal 
and the rational, must necessarily fail in the attainment 
of a spiritual philosophy ; and any complete conceptions 
of man's spirituality, which do not at the same time 
recognise the modification therein given from its combi- 
nation with the material and the animal, will also neces- 
sarily render the person incompetent to study and attain 
the science of mind as it dwells in a tabernacle of flesh 
and blood. An exclusion, in fact, of any one of the 
superinduced powers and faculties in humanity, and their 
reciprocal dependencies and modifications, must so far 
vitiate the system of philosophy which is thus attempted 
to be constructed. Liabilities to error here are greater 
than from all other sources. 

The only way to obviate these difficulties, and escape 
these liabilities to error, is by cultivating the intellect 
and elevating the conception to the essential spiritual 
being of the subject to be investigated. The use of any 
mechanical analogies or animal resemblances must not 
be allowed to delude the mind, and induce the conclu- 
sion that the rational and spiritual part of humanity can 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

be at all adequately apprehended through any such 
media. The mind must be studied in the light of its 
own conscious operations, and the perpetual interactions 
of the sense and the spirit, " the law in the members'' 
and " the law of the mind," must be accurately observed, 
and while the philosophy thus knows to distinguish things 
that differ, it must also know to estimate the modifica- 
tions which these different things make reciprocally upon 
each other. All material and animal being has a law 
imposed upon it, while all spiritual being has its law 
written within it ; the first moves wholly within the chain 
of necessity, the last has its action in liberty and under 
inalienable responsibility ; and all philosophy is falsely so 
called, which does not adequately discriminate between 
them. 

4. The broad comprehension necessary to an accurate 
classification of mental facts. 

The mind is a unit in its existence, through all its 
yaried states of activity and all its successive stages of 
development. It is moreover a living unity, growing 
to maturity and maintaining the integrity of its organi- 
zation, by the perpetuated energy of one and the same 
vital principle. When, then, w^e have attained all the 
single facts of mind which can be given in any experi- 
ence, and know how to analyze every fact to its simple 
elements, we have not yet completed our mental philo- 
sophy. The philosophy truly consists in the combina- 
tion of all these discriminated facts into one complete 
system. But there are very many ways in which a clas- 
sification of the facts found may be made, and thus sys- 



LIABILITY TO ERROR. 25 

terns from the same facts may be as various as their 
varied combinations may admit. Merely casual rela- 
tionships may be taken, or even fancied or arbitrary 
connections assumed, and made the principle by which 
the facts are brought into system ; or a blind imitation 
of another man's system may be followed, with no inde- 
pendent examination and determination of what the true 
order of classification may be. 

The liabilities to such faulty classifications find their 
source in the difficulty of attaining comprehensively what 
is the living order of arrangement, as found in the 
mind itself. Single facts can much easier be found, than 
the right place for them in combination with all others. 
To put each fact in its own place demands a knowledge 
of its relationship to all others, and thus no classification 
of it can be known as correct, except through a know- 
ledge of all others with which it must stand in connec- 
tion. The entire facts in the system must thus be 
known, each in its own control over others or dependency 
upon others, before they can be put together in any valid 
order of systematic arrangement. Such a comprehen- 
sive view is not readily attained. Few minds are will- 
ing to take the labor necessary to reach such a stand- 
point, where they may overlook the whole field and 
accurately note every division and subdivision within it. 
The several faculties and functions of mind are facts, as 
really as the phenomena which come out in their parti- 
cular exercises ; and the whole mind, with all these 
faculties, is itself a fact, to be accurately known in its 
completeness as really as any one faculty, or any one 

3 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

act of any faculty. The whole mind can be so known 
only by knowing all its component elements, and psycho- 
logy can be consummated only by such induction of every 
element, and such complete combination of them in a 
system, accordant with the comprehensive fact in the 
human mind itself; and only by such comprehensive 
knowledge can the liability to faulty systems in mental 
science be excluded. 

Thus forewarned of the difficulties in the prosecution 
of the study of mind, and the liabilities to error thereby 
induced, the student is better prepared to enter upon 
the necessary investigations, and to guard against any 
delusive influences that may assail him. His task is to 
attain the facts of mind and classify them, exactly as 
they are found to be in the clear light of conscious 
experience. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



THE CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 

Man holds within himself a combination of elements from 
the material, the animal, and the spiritual worlds ; and 
while he is to be studied as existing in his own unity, it 
must still be in the full apprehension of all this com- 
plexity of being. The material elements which enter 
into the composition of the human body are perpetually 
changing, and are themselves in reality no part of that 
which is essentially the man ; and yet, both the animal 
and the rational in man are much modified, by the influ- 
ences which come in upon them through the body. The 
mind is the distinct subject for present investigation, but 
not mind as pure and disembodied. The psychology we 
attain must recognize, through all its facts, the existence 
of a rational spirit, which dwells in a tabernacle of flesh 
and blood. 

Physiology would contemplate man solely as living 
hody, excluding all the peculiar endowments and prero- 
gatives of a spiritual life ; and while the study of man in 
such a limited view would find facts of much interest, as 
bearing upon the welfare of his physical constitution, yet 
would they be only remotely subservient to the investi- 
gations of psychology. 



28 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Anthropology, on the other hand, contemplates man 
in his entire being, physically, intellectually and morally ; 
recognizes the connections of mind with matter, and the 
influences of one upon the other; and expounds the 
modifications which mind undergoes, from the action of 
the external world upon it through the body. The facts 
attained in such a science have an important bearing 
upon psychology, where mind is regarded in its own 
unity, and with all its different faculties and functions of 
operation relatively to itself. The mind itself, view T ed 
exclusively in its own inherent relations, is not in human- 
ity as mind would be separately from all bodily connec- 
tions. The psychology of angels must differ much from 
that of man, inasmuch as pure spirit must exclude many 
facts which belong to an existence as incarnate spirit. 
Preliminary and auxiliary to the study of psychology is, 
thus, a summary recognition of some of the more promi- 
nent facts of anthropology. We need to take mind and 
body as one living organization, and learn the modifica- 
tions of the former which are made by its connections 
with the latter. 

Life is a spontaneous force, which collects its materials 
from the elements of surrounding nature, and assimilating 
them to its own uses, builds up thereby the organism of 
its own body. Matter is variously modified by mechan- 
ical, chemical and crystaline forces ; but in no w r ay does 
it take on the forms of an organized existence, except as 
thus vitalized and constructed into a corporeal dwelling 
for some living spirit. The crystal may seem in many' 
respects but a little remove from the plant ; yet is the 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 29 

former the same in quality through every part, and as 
perfect in the smallest portion as in the whole ; "while the 
latter has all its parts different from others, and no por- 
tion is in perfection without the whole. The crystal is 
still dead matter, and has no organs which reciprocally 
exist for each other; the plant is alive, and its root, 
stock, branches and leaves live each for the others, and 
all for each. 

In the plant we have the lowest forms of living organ- 
ization, and the life always working outwards to the sur- 
face. The growth of the stock and branches is on the 
outside, and every perpetuated bud successively develops 
itself only as a perpetual repetition of "what has gone 
before it. A higher force is superinduced upon vegetable 
life, and in this we have the animal, in whom every part 
grows simultaneously. The life is internal; digestion 
and assimilation are carried on within the body ; and a 
sentient capacity enables the animal to feel itself and the 
outer objects which come in contact with itself. Through 
the appropriate organs of sensation, perception is effected ; 
and the faculty of locomotion is guided, and the power 
of selection directed to its objects. 

Every individual life has its own law of working, and 
builds up its own body after its own pre-conditioned 
order. The forms are not in the matter, but already 
given in the vital force itself; and every plant, tree and 
animal, grows out after that shape wiuch its own inhe- 
rent law has determined for it. External conditions 
may force modifications of the primitive form, but it is 
still easy to find the original pattern, after which the 



30 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

inner life is struggling to shape its corporeal being. The 
life-force can only develop its own rudiments after its 
own forms, and can neither give to itself any new facul- 
ties, nor work after borrowed patterns. The conditions 
being supplied, each individual life works out its own 
organic forms to maturity. It also prepares and perfects 
the spermatic germs for perpetuating the race ; separat- 
ing these from itself, and leaving them to begin anew, in 
their distinct identity, the same work of development 
according to the old inherited type of existence. 

Superinduced, again, upon the animal is the far higher 
force of a rational existence. The capacity for thought 
and liberty is given ; and the spiritual is imparted, that 
is to restrain and control the animal; and in this we 
have the human, with its intelligent and responsible 
agency. The man has his life-force, with its own abnor- 
mal type of being and development, as has the plant ; 
and the capacity for inward digestion, assimilation, and 
nutrition; for locomotion, perception, and selection, as 
has the animal ; but far above all these is his spiritual 
endowment ; in which is rationality, personality, and the 
responsibilities of an immortality. Thus man is not 
merely life, like the vegetable ; but animal life: and not 
alone animal life, like the brute ; but a spiritual hie, 
which enthrones the rational upon the animal, allying 
him to the angels, and putting on him the likeness of the 
Divine. The one life, modified by all these superin- 
duced forces, each distinguishable from the others, builds 
up for man his outer tabernacle from the dust, and 
develops all his mental faculties to their maturity, and 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 31 

thus presents us with that humanity which is the subject 
of our philosophy, and all the facts of which, in its purely 
mental relations, are to be combined in our psychology. 
The connections of mind with the body, and thus with 
the agencies of an external world, are mediately through 
the nerves, and their origin is in the brain and its elon- 
gation in the spinal-cord. These nerves, as they go off 
from the brain and vertebral-column, branch out to all 
the members, and over the whole body. They thus 
carry their communications each way, from the mind to 
the muscles, and from the outer world to the mind. 
These functions are performed by distinct fibres of the 
nerves ; those which communicate with the mind, from 
the outer world, are termed afferent, or sensation fibres ; 
and those that communicate from the mind, outward, are 
termed efferent, or motor fibres. Sometimes a fascicu- 
lus of nerves may form a plexus with another having 
quite a different origin, and an inosculation may thus 
occur, by which the powers of sensation or motion may 
be given to such nerves as had been before destitute of 
one or the other. A distinct system of nervous commu- 
nication is employed for the digestive and nutritive func- 
tions, and also for the respiratory operations. The com- 
munications of some are voluntary, others involuntary ; 
some are in consciousness, others in unconsciousness. A 
perpetually open medium of communication is thus given 
between the mind and body; and, through the bodily 
organization, between the mind and the external world. 
It is thus to be expected that the mind will itself be 
affected by its bodily connections, and in this respect it 



32 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

is, that it has been said above, the prominent facts of 
anthropology have an important bearing upon psycho- 
logy. A few such may be given under the following 
heads : 

1. Modifications from external nature. 

Both plants and animals are greatly affected from the 
surrounding agents in external nature. The soil, the 
water, the air, the general climate, all modify the vege- 
table and the animal life, and give the peculiarities of 
their locality to all living things within the range of their 
influence. Some plants and animals are indigenous in 
certain regions, and may be cultivated as exotics over a 
wider territory, but beyond certain limits, no care can 
make either the plant or the brute perpetuate them- 
selves. The tropical, the temperate, and the frigid 
zones, all have their peculiar flora and fauna, and the 
limited adaptations of circumstances restrict many to a 
special locality. The cedar has its place on Lebanon, 
and the hysop, or the ivy, springs out of the wall. The 
rush does not grow without mire, nor the flag without 
water. The camel traverses the desert, the wild goat 
inhabits the mountain crag, and the pelican gathers its 
fish and feeds alone in the wilderness. Man is far less 
restricted in his home, than any other living creature on 
the earth. Though less protected by nature, he can yet 
feed and clothe himself, and so bend nature to his use, 
that he may live in any clime, and people every isle 
and continent. The earth has but very limited regions 
which man has not traversed, and few localities so inhos- 
pitable where he may not make his home. But though 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 33 
I 

thus truly a cosmopolite, yet is man every where subject 
to changes from the external influences which act upon 
him. The variations of climate and season, and even 
sudden changes of the weather, often induce, in the 
same man, a wide difference of mental states ; and he is 
made energetic or enervated, feels elasticity or lassitude, 
cheerfulness or gloom, and passes through very varied 
emotions, by only passing through varied scenes and 
circumstances. So, moreover, the influence of food and 
dress, employment and society, indoor confinement or 
outward exposure, will very much modify his mental 
experience, and make the same man exhibit quite other 
physical and mental characteristics, by taking him out 
from the action of one, and putting him under the opera- 
tion of another regimen. 

Let any one of such influences, or a combination of 
several, operate long upon a man, and this will secure in 
him fixed habits and traits of disposition ; and let this 
operate upon many men, and it will assimilate them each 
to each, and give to them all, in comparison with others, 
the peculiarities of a class ; or, in broader limits it will 
secure the distinctive marks of national character. Such 
influences, from deeper and stronger sources in nature, 
operating upon some of the people in early ages, and 
passing down in hereditary succession over long and 
widening generations, have divided the one human family 
into several distinct races ; and given to such as are the 
prominent types of their race, a marked discrimination 
from others. Perpetuated external influences, and the 
inherent law of propagation that ' like tends to the pro- 



34 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

duction of like,' has kept these lines of demarcation quite 
prominent, and the races shade off and run in to each 
other, only as the external influences become blended, 
or the amalgamation in the parents combine and assimi- 
late their peculiarities in their offspring. The physical 
form and features, and the mental facts, are all diverse 
in this diversity of races amid the family of mankind. 

There has been little uniformity hi the estimation of 
the distinct races of mankind, some numbering more and 
others fewer distinctions. If there be considered three 
races, whose type and characteristics differ exclusively of 
each other, and all other varieties be considered as a 
blending of these and their peculiarities as sub-typical 
only, and not indicative of distinct race, the most satisfac- 
tory account may be rendered. We shall then have the 
Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Nigritian races, as 
distinctively marked types in our common humanity. 
There is, in the geography of Asia, two elevated pla- 
teaus, stretching from west to east quite across the con- 
tinent. The western commences in Turkey, and has the 
Caucasus on the north, and the Taurus and Kurdistan 
on the south, and passes on through Persia to the Indus, 
having the table-lands of Iran at its eastern extremity, 
and declining to the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates 
on the south, and of the Caspian and Bactriana, with 
the rivers of Sihon and Gihon on the north. Then com- 
mences a far more elevated table-land, having the Him- 
maleh on the south, and the Celestial and Altai moun- 
tains on the north, and stretching eastward to the sea of 
Ochotsk on the Pacific, descending to the great peninsu- 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 35 

lar plains of Hindoostan, farther India and China on 
the south, and the frozen plains of Siberia on the north. 
This eastern Asiatic elevation contains Mongolia and 
Chinese Tartary. If we call the first the Caucasian, 
and the second the Mongolian table-land, to shall have 
the cradles of the three races of mankind, and the names 
for two of the most distinguished and the most numerous. 
The Caucasian race is that of the most perfect type of 
humanity, and may be said to have its center and most 
distinguished marks in Georgia and Circassia, and to be 
modified by distance and other circumstances in depart- 
ing from this geographical center. The peculiarity of 
the Caucasian type is that of general symmetry and 
regularity of "outline. The head oval; the lines of the 
eyes and the mouth dividing the whole face into three 
nearly equal parts ; the eyes large and their axis at right 
angles with the line of the nose, and the facial angle 
about 90 degrees, with a full beard covering quite to the 
ears. The complexion is white, and the stature tall, 
straight, and well proportioned. The Caucasian race can 
be followed through various migrations from the central 
home, as peopling south-western Asia, northern Africa, 
and almost the whole of Europe. In south-western Asia, 
we have had the Semitic families of the Hebrews, Assy- 
rians and Arabians; in Egypt and Mauritania, the 
Mitzraim stock ; and in Europe, the old Pelasgic tribes 
of the Mediterranean, with the successive Scythian irrup- 
tions ; the old Celtic, Teutonic and Gothic branches of 
southern Europe, and the Scandinavian and Sclavic 
tribes of the north of Europe, 



36 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

The Mongolian race differs widely from the Cauca- 
sian, and is quite inferior. Their home is in a more 
cold, hard, and inhospitable region. The highest moun- 
tains in the world environ and run through this immense 
plateau of western Asia, covered at their tops with per- 
petual snow, and especially at the south, fencing off all 
the warm and moist gales of the Indian Ocean, and with 
only few and distant openings for any communication 
with the vales below on either side. The primitive type 
of the Mongolian is a triangular or pyramidal form of the 
head, with prominent cheek bones ; the eyes cramped, 
and standing far apart, with the outer comers greatly 
elevated ; the facial angle 80 degrees ; the nose small ; 
the hair coarse, black, and hanging lankly down ; with 
scanty beard, which never covers the face so high as the 
ears ; and a bronze or olive complexion. The expan- 
sions of this race have passed down and peopled the 
peninsulas of India and China on the south; Tartary 
and Siberia on the north ; and have extended westward 
in the old Turcomans, the Magyar or Hungarian people, 
and the ancient Finns and Laps in the north-west corner 
of Europe ; and to the north-east of Asia in the Yacon- 
tis, the Tschoudi, and the Kamtschatkadales. The Tar- 
tars once overrun and subjugated the Sclavic tribes in 
European Russia, but a combined resistance drove them 
to return to their own family in Asia. 

The Nigritian race, which in Central Africa becomes 
the full-typed Negro, has a less distinctly marked central 
origin. Circumstances, however, determine the region 
which must have been the cradle of this race. At quite 



CONNECTIONS OF MUSBD AHD BODY, 37 

the eastern portion of the Caucasian table-land, or per- 
haps in the valley of the Indus and at the foot of the 
Himmalehs must have been their origin. There are now 
black people in this region, and of a wholly different type 
froirf the Caucasian or Mongolian. But the branching 
off of the propagations from this stock, from this point, is 
the sorest evidence. The characteristic marks of the 
Nigritian are a dull sallow skin, varying in all shades to 
a sooty and up to a shining black, with a crisp woolly 
hair, and nearly beardless, except upon the end of the 
chin, and more scanty on the upper lip. The head is 
compressed at the sides, the skull arched and thick, the 
forehead narrow and depressed, and the back of the head 
elongated. The facial angle 70 degrees, the nose flat 
and broad, the lips thick and protruding, and the throat 
and neck full and muscular. A strong odor is con- 
stantly secreted from the bilious coloring matter beneath 
the epidermis, and from numbers, under a hot sun, 
becomes intolerable to a European. 

They have passed on to the south-east, and been 
wholly, perhaps, displaced in Hindoostan and farther 
India, but were the primitive inhabitants of Australia, 
and still survive in the Papuas of New-Guinea and the 
more degraded savage of New-Holland and Van Die- 
man's Land. They also are found in the neighboring 
South Sea Islands, and where there is an admixture of 
the Mongolian blood, among other modifications, the 
woolly hair becomes a curling, crisping mop, springing out 
on ail sides of the head. To the east, they are still found 
in Laristan, southern Persia, and, as a mixture with the 



38 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Semitic stock, in the black Bedoueen of Arabia. But 
it is only as they have crossed into Africa, either by the 
Straits at the south, or the Isthmus at the north of the 
Eed Sea, and passed down into the interior of the conti- 
nent, that we find them in their most congenial and 
abiding lodging place. In Abyssinia are found natives 
almost black and with crisp hair, but in Senegal and 
Congo the full negro type is completely developed. 
From hence, they have been violently and cruelly trans- 
planted as slaves to other continents, and especially to 
America. The Maroons, escaped from Spanish and Por- 
tuguese masters in South America, have formed inde- 
pendent communities in the congenial swampy regions of 
Guiana, and farther on upon the banks of the Amazon, 
and in the absence of other races are rapidly multiplying. 
In addition to these, Blumenbach has the Malay and 
American races as equally exclusive and distinct. But 
the Malay is manifestly a hybrid stock, and is no where 
marked by a distinctive type that is expansively homo- 
geneous. The peculiarities of the Mongolian always 
more or less appear in the pyramidal head, prominent 
cheek bones, and scanty beard, but other modifications 
abound as the mixture of the Nigritian or Caucasian is 
the more abundant. They are usually inhabitants of the 
coasts and parts of islands, but are seldom the control- 
ling people of any region. Their most central locality 
is the peninsula of Malacca, but they are found also on 
the Indo-Chinese coast, in the island of Madagascar, in 
the Pacific Archipelago, and indeed it would seem that 
the extreme South American and Patagonian were 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 89 

expansions of the Malay stock. The American, again, 
is pretty manifestly the Mongolian, having crossed over 
Bhering's Strait and thence spreading its propagations 
over the continent. The high cheek bone, the scanty 
beard, and copper complexion, bespeak the Mongolian 
parentage ; and except in the Esquimau of the north, 
or the Patagonian of the south, there appears no parti- 
cular characteristic demanding the supposition of any 
blending of races, and the Esquimau may be only the 
lowest degradation of the Mongolian, as the Hottentot 
and Bushman is of the Nigritian. The extremes from 
the central home seem, in all cases, to present the 
greatest deterioration. 

The three races may in this way be made to include 
the human family, and any other broad and long con- 
tinued distinctions may be considered rather as sub-typi- 
cal, and indices of amalgamation, rather than exclusive 
typical divisions of race. But an exact delineation and 
separation of the races is of less importance, than the 
determination of the enquiry, if all races were originally 
from one parentage ? It is the theory of some very 
learned and able philosophers, that man, though of one 
genus, is of several different species, and that each spe- 
cies had its separate ancestry in its own central locality. 
This is not a favorable place for such investigation, nor 
can the main design now admit of an extended discus- 
sion, but the following considerations may be found suffi- 
cient to sustain the position, " that God hath made of 
one blood all the nations of men to dwell on all the face 
of the earth." 



40 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Among animals, there is at least as great a distinction 
between such as are undoubtedly of the same species, as 
in any difference of race among men. There are wide 
differences of race in neat cattle, horses, and especially 
dogs, where there is no ground to suppose that they 
sprang from an originally distinct created ancestry. In 
the case of swine and sheep, peculiarities have arisen 
within very authentic tradition, from some great change 
in a single case, and which have been perpetuated with 
all their typical marks, in a variety so broad as to make 
them henceforth properly distinct races. Domestication 
in fowls, as well as animals, has produced such remarka- 
ble changes, and which perpetuate themselves from gene- 
ration to generation, that we ought not to be surprised 
at the distinctions which circumstances may work among 
mankind, even to so great a degree as to be truly sepa- 
rations of race. Individual differences and peculiarities, 
and class and tribe distinctions, are greater among men 
than among the same species of animals ; it ought, then, 
to be anticipated that human races may be broadly dis- 
criminated. 

But, while there is this broader diversity in different 
portions of the human family, there is also, on the other 
hand, stronger indications of unity, linking all the typical 
races into one common brotherhood. The common pow- 
ers of speech and language ; the kindred emotions, sym- 
pathies, and appetites ; the convictions of responsibility 
to law, and the establishment of political governments ; 
the sense of dependence upon an Absolute Spirit, and 
the propensity to some religious worship ; the similarity of 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 41 

capacity in forming habits, coming under discipline and 
receiving cultivation ; and the sameness of times in the 
age of puberty, menstruation, and gestation, except in 
the modifications of manifest causes ; all determine that 
mankind of every race are yet the children of one family, 
In addition to all this, there is the great fact, that the 
races amalgamate and propagate from generation to 
generation, which is in contravention of the law between 
wholly distinct species. A few only can at all produce 
a hybrid offspring in a cross-generation, and when they 
do, the progeny is wholly sterile. The conclusion from 
this is certainly quite sound, that the distinctions of 
race among men are adventitious, and that all are the 
descendants of one original parentage. 

The argument for different species through a distinct 
original ancestry, from any supposed different centers of 
propagation, is altogether inconclusive. At the widest 
distance apart, it is still wholly practicable that all 
should have been cradled in the same region. The 
Patagonians or the Esquimaux may have an ancestry who 
wandered from Central Asia, and such a supposition 
involves no improbability. Indeed all tradition, so far 
as any is found among the scattered tribes of humanity, 
as well as all other indices, point to a common locality 
whence all have departed. The substantial facts of the 
Mosaic account are the most probable, and the most phi- 
losophical, of any theories that may be adopted. There 
are two strong objections to the vague popular notion 
that the first peopling of the earth, as now inhabited, 
radiated from the Armenian Mount Ararat. The old 

4* 



42 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Celtic, Teutonic, and Sclavic tribes of western Europe, 
historically emigrated from a region much farther to the 
north-east, and this would make them to have first emi- 
grated eastward, up high mountain ranges, only to have 
returned on the old track, in their passage to a perma- 
nent home in Europe ; and the fact that the Armenian 
Ararat is an almost inaccessible peak of a single moun- 
tain, springing from a comparatively limited base and 
with precipitous sides, makes it exceedingly unlikely that 
the ark, which, divinely directed, had survived the 
deluge, should have been there stranded, demanding a 
miracle to bring its enclosed animals safely down upon 
the plains below. It is said that the Circassian word 
Arak signifies solely a peak, and thus Ararat may very 
probably be a generic word for the high summit of any 
mountain. Others affirm it to be the name of a region, 
without any reference to any particular mountain. The 
greatest amount of probability is attained in supposing 
that the cradle of the human family, after the deluge, 
was in the region of the sacred rivers Sihon and Gihon, 
which are now confluent into the sea of Aral, as the 
Araxes and the Oxus. This plain of the Aral, as that 
to which the primitive patriarchs, with their posterity 
already somewhat multiplied, " journeyed from the east," 
and which was " in the land of Shinaar," would indicate 
that it was some of the high mountains which surround 
the table-land in Eastern Asia, and by far the most ele- 
vated points on the face of the globe, on which the ark 
rested after the deluge. The great dispersion of the 
human family, from this point, in the confusion of tongues 



CONKECHQffg OF mm ASD BODY. 43 

at Babel, -would very readily accord with all the facts of 
different races, and all the indicated centers of their 
typical peculiarities. 

Those emigrating eastward would enter the mountain 
defiles, and spread themselves upon the high table-lands 
of Tartary and Mongolia, and assimilating from marriage , 
climate and other circumstances acting in common, would 
become the grand Mongolian stock, sending off its suc- 
cessive tribes, and pressing each other farther onward, 
down the southern Asiatic plains and peninsulas, and off 
to the northern streams which empty into the Arctic 
Ocean. Those going southerly would come upon the 
mountain steps of Iran, and others round the Caspian 
would reach the more western portions of the Caucasian 
plateau, and the like assimilations would originate the 
Caucasian race, having a common center where its typi- 
cal marks received their most complete development. 
At the foot of the Koosh and Himmaleh mountains, within 
the valleys of the Indus, might be generated a dark- 
skinned, crisp-haired family of children, which should 
propagate their peculiarities, and carry abroad their 
typical marks, and emigrate to more southern and tropi- 
cal climes, instinctively indicated as most favorable for 
the perfect development of their intrinsic characteristics, 
and actually find this great center only as they reach 
the interior of the African continent. 

It is not probable that distinctions of race at all took 
their rise in the three sons of Noah. Nor is it to be 
supposed that any three different pairs of the human 
family, at any age, originated the three great distinctive 



44 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

races, and then, excluding and exhausting all others, at 
length came to people the world between them. Strong 
typical peculiarities somewhere began, and absorbed and 
assimilated all others within them. And thus, taking 
intrinsic germ and extrinsic circumstances, as given in 
humanity and outward nature, we find the fact to be, 
that mankind has worked its propagations in the three 
different fundamental types of the white and bearded, 
the olive and beardless, and the black and crisp-haired 
races. All other varieties may readily be reduced to 
some blending of these generic peculiarities. These 
distinctions of race are older than history, and the com- 
bination of Egyptian, Assyrian and Hindoo sculpture 
may give us the whole, as complete in unknown centu- 
ries backward, as any living specimens of the present 
age can furnish. 

2. Modifications of mind from constitutional organi- 
zation. 

Both the animal and rational forces, as originally 
superinduced upon the life-force, may be different, in 
proportion and degree, in different individuals ; and thus 
a different mental development may be secured, in the 
differences of rudiment hi the original germ. But that 
which is more manifest in experience is here of more 
importance : viz. that differences of bodily organization 
make corresponding modifications of mental development. 

The difference of sex manifests its influence through 
all the anatomical structure, and physiological character- 
istics. The bones, muscles, skin, hair, and the venous 
and nervous systems, are all modified from the constitu- 



CONNECTIONS OJ? MIND AND BODY. 45 

tional peculiarities of the particular sex. But the bodily 
development is not, perhaps, any more strongly marked 
by sex than is the mental. There is a radical and 
abiding difference between male and female intellect, 
and no culture can change the one to be as the other. 
Oftentimes the mind of the man may be more feminine, 
and that of the woman more masculine than the gene- 
rality of the sex, and thus it may also be with the physi- 
cal constitution ; and yet the one is never found to have 
made its leap quite over into the province of the other. 
In emotion and sympathy, intellectual adaptations and 
inclinations, together with entire mental propensities, the 
male and female mind have each their own type, mani- 
festly discriminated the one from the other. They may 
each become distinguished, in the public observation, for 
the same pursuits ; and whether of art, literature or 
science, there may be the products of both male and 
female industry which stand out prominent in excellence ; 
but perhaps never will the case occur, in which an expe- 
rienced and philosophical critic will not at once deter- 
mine, from the inherent characteristics of the productions 
themselves, that which the man and that which the 
woman has originated. The nature of the case makes 
the peculiar province of each separate from the other, 
and the law of nature has fixed the constitutional organi- 
zation of the one unlike to the other ; it is thus to be 
expected, that in the ongoings of nature, she will keep 
the openings of mind in each, perpetually discriminated 
the one from the other. 



46 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

The different temperaments among men present their 
peculiar facts quite as prominently as those of the dis- 
tinctive mental characteristics of the sexes. Every per- 
son has some prevalent type of mental activity induced 
by his constitutional temperament, and this temperament 
finds its source in the peculiar arrangements and func- 
tions of; bodily organization. The body, as an entire 
system, has within itself different subordinate systems, 
which minister together for the growth and preservation 
of the whole. Conspicuous among these subordinate 
systems are the nervous, the muscular, and the digestive 
organizations ; and any peculiarity of their agency might 
be expected to mark their results in certain constitutional 
states of the entire bodily system. They are, in fact, 
the source of the distinguishing temperaments among 
men, and throw their influence upon mental action in 
such a way as to secure permanent traits and habits of 
human life. The vitality and energy, which gives to one 
of these subordinate systems a special control in the 
whole body, will mark its effect in the whole organiza.- 
tion; and according to the measure of its controlling 
force, will be the temperament effected in the constitu- 
tion. There may be frequent cases in which no one of 
these so prevails as to exclude all traces of some other ; 
and yet, in perhaps all cases, some one will be found 
manifestly predominant, and thus give to the man the 
peculiarities of temperament which belong to its class. 
Rarely shall we find such a blending of all, as to leave 
the distinguishing temperament doubtful. 



CONDUCTIONS OF MIND AND feODY. 47 

Where the life gives a predominating energy and 
activity to the nervous system, there mil be induced the 
sanguine temperament. In the nervous system, there 
is made provision for animal sensibility and motion ; and 
-where there is a rapid and augmented supply of blood, 
the animal sensibility and activity is thus proportionally 
quickened. The whole nervous system is thereby made 
preeminently vigorous, and prompt to respond to every 
excitement. In this is the peculiarity of the sanguine 
temperament. Such a constitution will readily wake in 
sudden emotions, and be characterised by ardent feeling, 
quick passions, impetuous desires, and lively but tran- 
sient affections. There is a strong propensity to mirth 
and sport, and it easily habituates itself to a life of levity 
and gaiety. If sudden calamities occur, the sanguine 
temperament is readily overwhelmed in excessive grief, 
and melts in floods of tears for every affliction ; but soon 
loses the deep sense of its sorrows, and springs again 
buoyant to new scenes of pleasure. 

In literature, this temperament prompts to the use of 
figures, and abounds in striking expressions, glowing 
imagery, strong comparisons, and perpetual hyperbole. 
Its style is always highly ornamental and florid, and its 
prose abounds in all the metaphors of poetry. Whatever 
awakens emotion will be agreeable, and it opens itself 
readily to the excitement of music, or painting, or elo- 
quence ; especially when the appeal is made to the more 
lively and sprightly sensibilities. There is a perpetual 
propensity in all things to excess and exaggeration, to 
intense feeling and passionate excitement. The action 



48 • ANTHROPOLOGY. 

is impulsive ; me resolutions suddenly taken, and imme- 
diately executed ; and before unexpected difficulties, or 
long resisting obstacles, easily disconcerted and turned 
off in other directions. 

This temperament is often found strongly marked in 
individual cases, and sometimes gives its controlling 
peculiarities to national character. It is the tempera- 
ment widely prevalent in the French nation ; and, though 
much modified in the form of its action, is still also the 
prevalent temperament of the Irish people^ Single per- 
sons, among both the French and Irish, are characterised 
by other temperaments ; but the controlling type is that 
of the sanguine, and appears in their habits, their litera- 
ture, their eloquence, and their military exploits. 

Where the digestive organization is vigorously active , 
and the vital force goes out strongly in the process of 
assimilation and nutrition, there "will be the melancholic 
temperament. This is named, perhaps, from what may 
be rather the extreme point of the tendency of vigorous 
digestive functions ; but such a constitutional habit natu- 
rally disposes to rest and quietude, inducing to solitary 
meditation; calm, serious, and often sad reflection; and 
thus tending to gloomy and melancholy contemplations. 
Moderately controlling, such a temperament gives a 
sedate and serious habit of mind; and when more 
strongly prevalent, induces sadness and gloom. The 
prevalent distinctive type is, a meditative, moralizing 
state of mind ; a tendency to live in the past, and hold 
itself strongly conservative ; lamenting the departure of 
former goodness and greatness, and afflicting itself with 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 49 

the mournful convictions of present degeneracy. There 
may often be a less sad and gloomy habit of meditation, 
and then the mind delights to lose itself 5 in fond dreams 
and romantic fancies, and live in a world of ideal crea- 
tions. There will be a passive longing after imagined 
scenes of angelic purity and perfection; discontented 
with the realities passing around him ; and withdrawing 
from the actual, to absorb himself in the tranquil and 
serene enjoyment of his own ideals. 

This is rather the temperament for particular persons, 
than for collective communities ; and can, perhaps, in no 
case be said to have constituted a national peculiarity. 
It may be found the most frequently, in the contempla- 
tive and speculating German ; but its clearest exhibition 
is in scattered individuals among all ages. Jeremiah in 
Judea ; Homer in Greece ; Dante in Florence ; Cowper 
in England ; and Goethe in Germany ; are all, in differ- 
ent forms, examples of the melancholic temperament. 

Where the muscular system is strong and of quick 
irritability, and the connected arterial action is full and 
rapid, there will be given the choleric temperament. 
The direct tendency of this controlling muscular vitality, 
is to prompt and sustained activity ; enlarged plans and 
hardy, patient endurance in execution; difficult enter- 
prises, and courage and resolution in meeting difficulties 
and conquering all opposition. It differs from the san- 
guine temperament, in that its action is from deliberate 
purpose, and not from impulse ; and is sustained in per- 
severing decision, and not by violent passion. Its aims 
are high, and its ends comprehensive ; demanding plan 

5 



50 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

and calculation for their success, and time and combined 
instrumentalities for their accomplishment. With a bad 
heart, the enterprises may be malignant, and their pro- 
secution shockingly cruel, bloody and ferocious; and 
with a good heart, the undertakings will be benevolent, 
and urged on with a generous and noble enthusiasm; 
but in each case, there will be determination, self-reli- 
ance, and invincible decision and persistence in attaining 
the object. Magnanimity, self-sacrificing chivalry, and 
exalted heroism, will compel admiration for the actor, 
even in a bad cause, and secure lasting respect and 
veneration for the dauntless champion of truth and right- 
eousness ; and the choleric temperament may be found 
in each of these fields so different in moral estimation, 
but direct, determined and persevering in both. Vindic- 
tive and selfish, or humane and philanthropic ; the cho- 
leric man will be bold, comprehensive and effective. The 
energy of muscle stimulates to enterprise of mind. 

The old heroes of Lacedemon, and the Spartan band ; 
the intrepidity and firmness of old Roman generals and 
armies; these may stand as examples, of numbers 
together, who have been prompted by the influences of 
a constitutionally choleric temperament; but in quite 
opposite moral scenes, we may find the most striking 
instances in separate cases. It has revealed itself in 
the ambitious and the benevolent ; the usurping tyrant 
and the strenuous resister of tyranny. Caesar and Bru- 
tus had each a choleric temperament. Buonaparte and 
Howard, Hampden and Laud, Herod and Paul, all 
were choleric. 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 51 

On the other hand, if the muscular system is less 
energetic and irritable,' and the vascular system more 
quiet and the circulation calm and equable, there will 
be the phlegmatic temperament. This, again, is named 
from the extreme indices of its class, and when the tem- 
perament is emphatically phlegmatic, it is meant that the 
mind is heavy and torpid, and the man sluggish and 
approaching to the stupid. But when only moderately 
phlegmatic, this temperament is of all the others the 
most favorable for well directed, long sustained and 
effective mental activity. The quiet and orderly move- 
ment of the vital functions, and the well tempered mus- 
cular energy, give occasion for clear self-possession, and 
the direction of the mental action to any point, and for 
a long period. With the same original talent, this tem- 
perament will best conduce to eminence and influence, 
and secure the most lasting reputation. It will escape 
the passionate excitements and impulses of the sanguine ; 
the meditative, dreamy, and sometimes gloomy inactivity 
of the melancholic ; and the impetuous and often irritable 
and violent enterprises of the choleric temperaments. 
In the even flow of the vital force through all the nerv- 
ous and muscular organization, the entire mental energy 
finds its opportunity to go out full and free to any work, 
under the control of a sound and calm judgment. 
Where the sanguine would be impulsive and fitful, the 
moderately phlegmatic will be self-balanced and stable ; 
where the melancholic would be visionary, and either 
romantic or dejected, this will be practical, judicious, 
and cheerful ; and where the choleric might be strenu- 



52 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

ous and obstinate, self-willed and irascible; this will 
exhibit equanimity, patience, and calm self-reliance. 
The consciousness of complete self-possession, and the 
capability of entire self-government, enables the man 
steadily to apply any required faculty, and stedfastly to 
persevere in any undertaking. 

The Dutch, as a nation, approach the extreme phleg- 
matic point; the philosophic German mind is phlegmatic, 
tempered with the melancholic ; and the practical Eng- 
lish mind is phlegmatic, modified by the choleric. The 
Dutchman plods, the German speculates, the Englishman 
executes. The New-England mind is more intensely 
inventive and executive than its parent Anglo-Saxon 
stock, in that the Yankee temperament is less phlegmatic 
and more choleric. The moderately phlegmatic temper- 
ament has given the world some of the most noble speci- 
mens of humanity. The patriarch Joseph, the prophet 
Daniel, the philosopher Newton, and the patriot Wash- 
ington, all were moderately phlegmatic. More than all, 
the temperament assumed in the man Christ Jesus was 
the perfection of the phlegmatic. 

Every man is thus, constitutionally, under the perpet- 
ual bias of some prevailing temperament. The putting 
forth of the mental activity is, readily and spontaneously, 
in the line prompted by the constitutional temperament, 
and the man, thus, possesses a natural character — a 
constitutional disposition — in the bias given to the mind 
through the bodily organization. This does not by any 
means determine the radical moral character, which is 
wholly from the spiritual disposition and not from consti- 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 53 

tutional bias. Peter was sanguine, Paul was choleric ; 
whether as men, or as Christian Apostles. A change 
of moral character makes no change of constitutional 
character, inasmuch as only the state of the will, or 
moral disposition, changes, and not the constitutional 
temperament. The temper is to be governed and held 
in subjection by the firm good will, and the peculiar tem- 
perament will demand its peculiar discipline, and the 
man must be held responsible for his self-control with 
any temperament; but every man needs to know his 
own constitutional bias, that he may discipline himself 
intelligently and not blindly. 

3. The effect of bodily iveakness upon mind. 

The rational, the animal, and the vital are so con- 
nected in man that they make up the one mind ; and 
the body is so built up by it, and developed with it, that 
all goes to make up the one entire man; and thus it 
must be that an intimate sympathy shall ever subsist 
between the mind and the body. In the thousand cases 
of bodily weakness or defect, the mental activity must 
thereby become modified. Experience teaches that one 
cannot suffer, without the other suffering with it. 

In the immaturity of bodily development in youth, the 
mind also is immature, nor can any intellectual culture 
hasten, very much, the mental faculties to maturity 
beyond the growth of the body. An earlier and better 
course of instruction may give to one child's mind much 
greater attainments than to another, but at the widest 
practicable difference, it will still be one child's mind 
differing from another child's, and neither will have the 

5* 



54 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

manly mind until the body also has its manly stature. 
And thus also in the decline of life through growing 
years; the body does not long pass its maturity, and 
begin to experience the infirmities and decrepitude of 
age, but the corresponding fact appears also in mind, 
that its vigor and activity suffers a similar decline. The 
steps are not always, nor indeed often, exactly equal 
between the body and the mind ; and thus manifesting 
that, although in the same organic unity, the mind is 
not to be confounded with the body ; still the steps tend 
ever in the same direction ; and while one may hasten 
at times faster than the other, they cannot very long at 
the same time be going the one opposite to the other. 
From the cradle to the grave, the body and mind reci- 
procally affect each other. 

The sickness of the body, at any period of its develop- 
ment, works its effect also in the mind. The mental 
faculties are ordinarily paralyzed, in the languor and 
weakness of bodily disease. Instances are sometimes 
given of feeble health and bodily suffering with much 
mental activity and power, as in the cases of Richard 
Baxter, Robert Hall, etc. But such cases are rare, and 
though perhaps occasionally giving examples of great 
energy of mind, which resists and to a great extent con- 
quers the tendencies of a sickly body ; yet, unless pre- 
ternaturally quickened by the very excitement of bodily 
distress, the strong probability is, that those very minds 
would have been more vigorous and active, had they 
been lodged in sounder bodies. They can hardly con- 
stitute exceptions to the general rule, that the sound 



CONNECTIONS OP MIND AND BODY. 55 

mind must have a sound body. The dismemberment or 
derangement, of any particular organ of sense, affects at 
once the power of perception through that organ ; and a 
given degree of violence to the bodily structure, and 
especially of percussion upon the brain, immediately 
arrests all consciousness, and leaves a blank in all the 
operations of the mind. Sudden shocks, given to the 
bodily frame, are often attended by the distressing men- 
tal phenomena of swooning, syncope, delirium, etc. 

A still more remarkable affection of the mind, in con- 
nection with bodily exhaustion, is found in the state of 
sleep. When the body has used a given amount of its 
nervous and muscular power of irritability, and thus 
become enfeebled in its own action, there must be the 
recurrence of a state of sleep, in order to recruit and 
restore the exhausted energy. Urgent claims and excit- 
ing exigencies may drive off sleep for a time, and pro- 
tract the period of wakefulness ; but at length there 
comes the limit, beyond which no effort nor exigency 
can prevent sleep. The fatigued soldier sleeps amid the 
carnage of battle ; the exhausted sailor sleeps upon the 
top of the mast. Mind and body both come under a 
partial suspension or paralysis of their ordinary func- 
tions ; self-consciousness is lost, or only partially and con- 
fusedly retained, in the reproductive imagination of 
dreams ; the control of voluntary agency ceases ; and 
the mind shuts itself up from all communication with the 
outer world. When the man again awakes in clear con- 
sciousness, he finds both his bodily and mental faculties 
revived and invigorated. 



56 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Plants do not wake, and thus plants cannot be said to 
sleep. There may be in some a folding of the leaf, from 
the withdrawment of light, but nothing that is analogous 
to the sleep of animals. It is the function of sensibility, 
and its origination of motion, which demands sleep. The 
animal, and man as animal, sleeps ; but though ration- 
ality may be suspended in unconsciousness, it cannot be 
said that the reason sleeps, nor that reason dreams. 
Our dreams may simulate the experience of sense, or 
the judgments of the understanding ; but the mind never 
truly philosophizes, and builds up systems of science in 
its dreams. 

4. The reaction of body and mind upon each other. 

Physicians have long known, and very carefully 
regarded the fact, in their medical practice, that there 
is a reflex action of the mind upon the body, which is 
both certain and strong. Confidence, cheerful anticipa- 
tion, and the stimulus of hope and expectation of happy 
results, are almost the necessary conditions of any very 
favorable effect from any prescribed remedies. Not 
unfrequently, most remarkable cures of chronic diseases 
occur from the strong excitement of intense expectation ; 
while at other times, diseases prove fatal from an irritable 
or a desponding state of mind, which might otherwise, 
to all appearance, have been readily cured. Diseases, 
also, become epidemic, and spread sometimes through 
large communities, from the general prevalence of a 
panic, or diffused sympathy over the region ; and such 
prevalent diseases cease when the panic subsides, or the 
public attention becomes directed to other objects. 



CONNECTIONS of motd and body. 57 

Strong mental agitations, in any way, especially violent 
• passions, have their immediate effect upon the body ; 
and these consequences are so invariably connected 
with their peculiar mental antecedent, that we at once 
determine the inward emotion from the outward bodily 
affection. Joy, grief, anger, fear, etc., when strongly 
active, are as readily apprehended in the countenance, 
and the external bodily affections, as they could be by a 
direct communication with the spirit itself. 

Remarkable cases, of mental emotion reacting upon 
bodily organization, are sometimes given in the effects 
upon the unborn infant, from strong maternal excite- 
ment. There seems to be strong evidence, from the 
conscious experience of the mother, and her apprehension 
and expectation of such results to appear in the child 
after birth, that the maternal emotion and the marks of 
the offspring are truly connected as cause and effect. 
At one time, slight peculiarities only are induced; at 
others, permanent marks appear in the skin; impres- 
sions are made upon the features, or modifications of the 
members or of the body occur ; and indeed, in extreme 
cases, there are monstrous malformations and shocking 
deformities. In the general fact of such reactions of 
mind upon body, these peculiar cases are readily expli- 
cable. The life of the infant is still one with that of the 
mother, as the bud and fruit are one with the parent 
tree while growing upon it, and while the organization of 
the embryo is in its forming state, it is more susceptible 
to impressions than any portion of the parent's already 
matured organism. The action of the mental emotion is 



58 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

more readily upon it, and the effects more lastingly pro- 
duced in it, than in any part of the maternal constitu- 
tion. The adult body is sometimes strongly and perma- 
nently affected, from the reaction of powerful mental 
excitement. Lasting distortions of the muscles, and a 
changing of the hair to permanent whiteness, have been 
induced by extreme paroxysms of mental agony and 
sudden fright or shocks from some imminent danger. 

Bodily habits also arise and become confirmed, through 
the action of some permanent mental peculiarities. A 
peculiar train of thought, or course of study, or any spe- 
cial channel through which the intellectual activity is 
made to move, will give the outward characteristic in the 
air and general manners and demeanor of the person. 
Hence different professions and employments in life, 
where strongly engrossing, give their distinctive peculi- 
arities, and form well known classes of men in their 
general appearance. So the members of the body 
become habituated to certain movements, by the long 
control of the mind over them, and thus are made skilful 
in many employments. The limbs move almost spontar 
neously from such habits, while formerly the action could 
scarcely be effected by the most painful attention. So 
in mechanical trades, playing on musical instruments, 
especially in penmanship, and the use of the organs in 
speech ; the muscular movement is so habituated in its 
course, that the man loses all consciousness of his volun- 
tary control over it. 

Strong mental effort often indicates itself in external 
bodily changes and motions, and the kind of inner action 



CONNECTIONS OF MIND AND BODY. 59 

marks its straggling energy in the appropriate outward 
expression; the eyebrows are raised, or the lips con- 
tracted, or the nostrils dilated, or the shoulders shrugged, 
or even the whole form expanded and elevated, from the 
mental energizing. A player at bowls or quoits invol- 
untarily distorts, and turns his whole body awry, when 
that which is thrown is seen moving wide from the mark ; 
while the body is as spontaneously made erect, and 
rigidly straight, when the thing thrown is moving direct 
to hit its object. When striving to communicate in an 
imperfectly understood language, the mind, in the same 
way, reacts upon the body. Unconsciously, every limb 
and muscle is made to gesticulate and express, and the 
whole body takes on those attitudes which help the mind 
to give over its thoughts to another. Particular and 
permanent expressions of countenance are thus naturally 
induced. The inner emotions have energized to give 
their outward expression, and the frequent action has 
brought the muscles under their controlling forms, and 
this has been perpetuated so long that the marks have 
become firmly set upon the features, and the face is 
made to look the full reflection of the inner prevailing 
disposition. The old proverb, "Handsome those who 
handsome do" is thus founded in truth; and the general 
principles of physiognomy have a truly philosophical 
basis. The law of mental action is enstamped on the 
bodily organization. 



EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 



CHAPTER I 



THE GENERAL METHOD OF EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

In entering upon the study of the human mind, as given 
in experience, we have no conditions, in any determining 
ideas of how the mind must be and act, to guide us in 
our progress ; and we can determine our general method, 
therefore, not from any previous conceptions of the sub- 
ject mind, but only from the manner in which we are to 
investigate it. This is by direct observation in the inner 
sense, and attaining whatever can there be found ; vindi- 
cating the accuracy and completeness of our observation; 
and putting all our elements into one whole, according 
to their ascertained relations. Whatever statement or 
illustration we may give, the end in view must be, not so 
to paint an image or express a conception, that another 
mind shall take the fact wholly from verbal representa- 
tion ; but that, in going direct to his own consciousness, 
our representation shall help him to find the fact 
already there, among the mental phenomena in his own 
experience. 



GENERAL METHOD. 61 

The elements to be used are thus the facts which 
experience gives us, and which are to be found only in 
the consciousness that the mind has of its own faculties 
and phenomena ; and such elementary facts must first 
be attained. It not unfrequently occurs that certain 
alleged facts are disputed, and one affirms of some phe- 
nomena in mental experience that which another denies ; 
it is thus necessary to attain and apply some ultimate 
criterion, which shall be conclusively and universally 
decisive in settling all contradictions ; and such authori- 
tative test must be a second requisition. The facts, as 
collected and made valid beyond dispute, must arrange 
themselves into an ordered system, and the whole at last 
stand out in our combined psychology, as the exact and 
complete counterpart of the thinking, feeling, active mind 
in its own reality ; and this systematic arrangement is 
the third result to be accomplished. The whole field is 
completely filled by these three operations : — 
I. The attainment of the mental pacts. 

II. The recognition of a criterion in disputed 

CASES. 

III. The correct classification in a system. 

This general method has itself a certain order by 
which it may be best completed, and this makes it desir- 
able to occupy this chapter in determining some of the 
particulars by which this general method may best be 
carried forward. 

I. In the attainment of facts. 

That mind is, and what mind is, will include all the 
facts which belong to our subject, and these are to be 

6 



62 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

obtained in the readiest and surest manner. The more 
general and comprehensive facts will be first needed, in 
order that by their light the leading divisions in mental 
classification may appear, and thus the more particular 
facts may be found and noted, each in the order and 
place they ought to assume in the completed system. 
And as the best process for finding the facts, whether 
more general or more particular, the following directions 
will be found serviceable. 

1. Fix the attention upon single facts. 

Begin, by holding the apprehension steady and clear, 
to some one and simple phenomenon of your inner mental 
being. Overcome, in this, and reverse the old habit of 
ever looking outward, and resting upon organic sensation 
for distinct and definite perception, and constrain your- 
self to a facility of inward attention, and clear apprehen- 
sion of that which is going on in your own conscious 
activity. Take up some one mental fact by itself — a 
thought, an emotion, or a volition — and examine it so 
closely and accurately, that you henceforth are fully 
competent, in the knowledge of the fact in itself, to dis- 
tinguish it completely from any other mental fact that 
may afterwards be apprehended. When one is thus 
known, take another, and then another, in the same way 
and with the same result of ready discrimination, until 
you have fully excluded the liability to confound any one 
fact with others that may be like it. It is not meant 
that the mind should be detained in this inspection of 
single facts, successively, until the entire mental elements 
have been examined in detail ; such a perpetuated pro- 



GENERAL METHOD. 63 

cess would weary and overload the memory, and the 
former facts be crowded out as later facts were acquired. 
But take facts, thus, one by one, until you have made 
yourself quite familiar with mental phenomena, and habit- 
uated yourself to the process of intro-spection, and 
learned to define inner appearances as accurately as 
outer objects. Just as the painter must accurately dis- 
tinguish colors and know them in their single being as 
separate one from others, before he can blend them into 
his combined forms of beauty, so must the student of the 
human mind get its facts singly and distinctly, before 
he can put them together in one harmonious system of 
psychology. When he has habituated himself to this, 
he may go on with his system — building safely and 
pleasantly. 

2. Compare single facts with each other j and find 
their true relations. 

Each mental fact is elementary in the completed men- 
tal system, and must stand in unity with every other 
fact as component part of the same mind. There must, 
therefore, be that in each fact which determines its rela- 
tion to others ; and that which thus determines its con- 
nection is itself a part of the fact, and as necessary to 
be apprehended as any thing else which appears in it. 
Its true place in the system cannot be found, except as 
this determined relationship is fully apprehended. The 
wheels of a mill, with their pinions, and cogs, and bands, 
will never come together and go, except according to 
the law of conformation in each part ; and no more will 
a mind than a mill become an acting whole, except as 



64 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

each part finds and observes its determined relationship. 
When we examine separate grains of sand, we can find 
nothing which determines their mutual relationship in 
one mechanical combination; for they have not thus 
been adapted to each other by any reciprocal conforma- 
tion. But not thus with any single element of mind. 
Each has that in it which marks its relation to others, 
and all must be found and put in connection accordingly. 

3. Complex facts must be carefully analyzed. 

Many single facts of the inner as well as of the outer 
world may at first appear also to be simple, but which a 
careful analysis determines to be compounded of several 
elements. In the whole study of mind, there is nothing 
which demands so keen a penetration and acute discrimi- 
nation as this accurate analysis of the facts which come 
up in our consciousness. Some of the most perplexing 
points of controversy in morals and theology originate, 
either in the neglect or the incompetency to see a dis- 
tinction in things which differ, and thus putting as one 
thing, that which should be known as a combination of 
several things. Mischievous errors long keep their con- 
trol, and are maintained and enforced as fundamental 
truth, solely because some analysis of a mental fact has 
been incomplete or faulty. The capacity for accurate 
and complete analysis is to the metaphysician, what the 
scalpel is to the anatomist, and the retort and solvents 
to the chemist. 

II. The ultimate criterion for disputed facts. 

We shall find some facts that are themselves prelimi- 
nary to, and conditional for experience, and which can 



GENERAL METHOD. 65 

not thus be given in experience, and for which our con- 
sciousness can only testify that they are, without being 
able to reveal what they are. But the special elements, 
which go to constitute an Empirical Psychology, must be 
given in experience, both as to the fact and the manner 
of their being; it must thence follow, that we have 
no need to make any enquiries, which shall carry us 
out of the proper field of human consciousness. If we 
would determine the necessary and universal principles, 
by which experience itself must be conditioned and 
expounded, we should thereby wholly leave the pro- 
vince of Empirical, and go over into that of Rational 
Psychology. 

To each man, therefore, his own consciousness must 
be the test of his facts. If he cannot find it within his 
own consciousness, the phenomenon to be used in a system 
of psychology can, in reality, be no fact for him. That 
mental state or exercise, which has not been within his 
own experience, cannot be so communicated by any use 
of language, that he can attain an adequate conception 
of it. He who was never conscious of a sound, or a 
color, can never be made to conceive what these are by 
any description or attempted analogous representation. 
And so of any purely mental phenomenon ; it can be 
apprehended only as it is made to appear in the man's 
own consciousness. A cognition or feeling, for one man, 
Is not that also for another, except as it has alike been 
within the experience of both. And when the testimony 
of consciousness is given for any fast, this must be con- 
clusive to the man himself. For, should any one pretend 

6* 



66 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

to doubt the being of a fact clearly given in conscious- 
ness, he might at once be asked, by what authority he 
could affirm that he doubted? His doubt must be a 
phenomenon given in consciousness. And if the con- 
sciousness is valid for a fact of doubting, so also must it 
be for the fact which he pretends to doubt. A denial 
of the conclusiveness of consciousness for the person him- 
self, would preclude the possibility of any valid affirma- 
tion of his own scepticism. If the question be one of 
experience, simply, the testimony of consciousness is 
final. It is not competent for us to enquire into the 
determinative principles of consciousness itself, and thus 
show how any experience is valid ; for this must take us 
at once into the higher sphere of reason, and give a 
philosophy for consciousness and not a system founded 
in consciousness. Implicit faith in the distinct revela- 
tions of a clear consciousness, is the basis of all empi- 
rical science ; and any questions that would reach higher, 
and unsettle this confidence in consciousness, can be met 
only in the higher light of a Rational Psychology. 

But, while the consciousness of the man must be valid 
for himself, it may not unfrequently be alleged that there 
is a discordant consciousness in reference to the same 
mental phenomenon. The same man at different times, 
or different men at the same time, may affirm that the 
testimony of consciousness is contradictory. To each 
man, at all times, his consciousness must be conclusive ; 
but here comes a case of direct contradiction, and both 
cannot be valid. Is then all experience at a stand, and 
on this point can nothing be determined as fact in our 



GENERAL METHOD. 67 

psychology ? or, shall we say that both are alike good 5 
and each man's fact competent to become an elementary 
part of his own system, and thus leave psychological 
systems to differ from each other, as each man may 
determine in his own case ? This cannot be permitted ; 
for we must have the one system of psychology for uni- 
versal humanity. Here, precisely, arises the demand 
for some valid universal criterion, which must settle all 
disputed cases. 

This criterion is given in the common consciousness 
of mankind: or which may, in other words, be termed 
common sense. Let it be here fully noted, that a philo- 
sophy of common sense can never go beyond empirical 
facts, and conclusions drawn from them in the logical 
understanding. All principles that are above a nature of 
things, and which condition nature in a supernatural, must 
be wholly foreign and entirely impertinent to such a phi- 
losophy. If such necessary principles are at all recog- 
nized and used, this can be only as mere assumption, and 
solely because the philosophy finds the need of them and 
cannot progress without them; but not at all because 
common sense can know anything about them, nor know 
anything by them, except altogether through the sophism 
of a petitio principii. Eminent names among the philo- 
sophers of the Scottish school, feeling the restrictions of 
the system of Locke, have assumed to use a! priori prin- 
ciples under the name of common sense, and to call the 
work, the philosophy of common sense, yet is it easy to 
convict the system of assuming much more than common 
sense can vouch for. The common consciousness can 



68 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

never reach beyond the series of condition and condi- 
tioned, and thus common sense can know only "within the 
conditioned ;" and therefore it is wholly incompetent for 
this philosophy to be using absolute truths and necessary 
principles. There is the conscious need of such princi- 
ples on which to hang its conditioned facts, and find a 
true beginning for its philosophy, but common sense can 
no other wise attain them, than by making the want of 
a thing to be an evidence of the valid possession of the 
thing ; and in this way no use of first principles can be 
legitimate. 

Common sense can vouch for only that which comes 
within the common consciousness, and we have here need 
to use it as ultimate criterion for nothing more. Our 
present system receives only the facts of experience, 
leaving all necessary principles to be determined in a 
higher philosophy, to which the application of the term 
4 common sense ' would be wholly a misnomer. But 
within the field of experience, the test of common sense 
is final. It determines for us all that Empirical Psycho- 
logy can use, and can stand as umpire in all disputed 
cases that can arise. In any occurrence of an alleged 
contradiction in consciousness, we need to find that which 
is the common consciousness, and this must exclude all 
else. If any man allege a consciousness different from 
that of mankind in general, this can be no matter of any 
farther concern to us ; for if it were true, it would only 
prove that he was alterum genus, and that any facts, 
which were peculiar to him, would be of no account in 
a system which embraces those only of our common 



GENERAL METHOD. 69 

humanity. Rightly used, the test of common sense is 
conclusive, for only that which common sense sanctions 
can have any place in our psychology. 

But this appeal to common sense must, in all the pro- 
cess, be legitimately pursued. Three important rules 
must be observed in order to insure a safe decision. 

1. The facts must lie within the range of common 
consciousness. — There are many questions which may 
be raised about facts that are quite beyond human expe- 
rience, and many facts which have come within the expe- 
rience of but few of the human family. No such facts 
are needed in a system of empirical psychology, and for 
such facts, a criterion of common sense would be unavail- 
able. Any facts in the experience of disembodied spirits 
must lie wholly beyond the range of mortal conscious- 
ness ; and such facts as the experience of a miracle, a 
resuscitation from a drowning state, or a balloon ascen- 
sion, have come within the consciousness of too few of 
mankind, to make any general appeal practicable. The 
test must be attempted only in such cases as manifestly 
fall within the range of common experience. 

2. The decision given must be general. — Not the 
decision of a few in any age, or of one age amid succes- 
sive generations ; but so universal in all ages, as to prove 
for itself the general assent of the race of man. This 
may be gathered from the history, the laws, the langua- 
ges and the common customs and popular proverbs of the 
world ; inasmuch as in all these ways is embodied the 
conscious experience of ages. 



70 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

3. The decision must be unbiassed. — The great mass 
of mankind do not give an unbiassed decision in relation 
to human guilt for general ingratitude to God ; the obli- 
gation of immediate repentance ; or the fact of constant 
divine dependence ; inasmuch as common depravity 
darkens or perverts the common consciousness. But 
general decisions, -where no bias appears, or especially 
where manifestly the decision is against a general bias, 
may well be trusted. 

These three requisites in the application of common 
sense, the competency, generality and honesty of the 
decision, will give validity to any fact that may so be 
sustained. 

III. The classification or the facts. 

Our system cannot here be built up, as in an a' priori 
science, by the carrying of one necessary principle 
through every fact, and thus binding them all in unity 
by it. Nor can it be properly inductive, in the sense 
of assuming some general hypothesis, and selecting and 
arranging the facts by it as they may be found in 
nature. We have simply to find the human mind as it 
is, and attain and classify its facts, just as these facts 
are given and connected in the consciousness. 

There are two methods in which a classification may 
be conceived as progressing ; one, where the order of 
nature is followed, by beginning at the center and work- 
ing from thence outward ; the other, by taking nature 
as already a product, and beginning at the outside and 
working within, as far as practicable. The first may be 
called the order of reason; inasmuch as the reason 



GENERAL METHOD. 71 

would so take the moving force, or conditioning principle, 
at the center, and follow it out to the consummation : the 
second may be called the order of discovery ; inasmuch 
as in experience, the thing is already given, and we 
begin on the outside and follow up the discovery, as far 
as we may, to see how the product was effected. The 
genius that first created the idea of a watch, would 
begin, in the thought, with the moving power at the cen- 
ter, and carry this force, in its development of forms and 
connections, outward, till in his completed conception, he 
had the whole in its unity, from the main-spring to the 
moving-hands over the dial-plate. But the discoverer, 
of how a watch already in experience had been invented, 
would begin his examination at the hour-index, and go 
backwards toward the central force in the main-spring. 
Both get the science of the watch ; one makes it, the 
other learns it. 

In empirical philosophy, we can only be learners. We 
must study what is, not project what may be. Nature 
began at the center and worked outward. She had her 
vital force in its salient point, and carried that out to the 
mature development. The germ expanded to the ripened 
plant ; the embryo grew to the adult stature. But the 
empirical philosopher can take nature's products only so 
far as already done, and study as he may how has been 
nature's process. He is shut out from nature's hiding- 
place at the center, and cannot say what it is that lies 
potential there, and determine in the primal cause what 
the effects must be. He can only learn nature, as she 
has already made herself to be; and cannot project 



72 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY, 

nature in her primal laws, and thereby determine how 
she must be. 

So we must study the human mind. We are to attain 
the facts in completed system, just as mind in reality 
is, and not form some ingenious theory, nor adopt some 
other man's theory, which we strive to maintain with- 
out nature, or in spite of nature. Valid facts, clas- 
sified according to their actual connections, will give a 
psychology which proves itself. In it, all confusion will 
be reduced to order ; it will expound all anomolies, and 
expel all absurdities, and stand out the exact counterpart 
of the living actual mind itself. 

The general order of classification, thus determined 
to be that of discovery; there need only be added the 
following general directions : 

1. Permanent and inherent relationships between the 
mental facts are alone to be regarded. 

2. Homogeneous facts only may be classified. Nature 
never mingles contraries together. 

3. The system must find a place for all the facts. 

4. When completed, the system must be harmonious 
and self-consistent. 



CHAPTER II. 



GENERAL FACTS OF MIND. 

There are certain facts relative to the mind as a whole, 
and which appertain to it comprehensively in its own 
being, and which as thus generally inclusive of all the 
other subordinate facts of mind, it will be better to attain 
primarily and separately. In these general facts and 
states of mind, may be apprehended the true order of 
arrangement for bringing all subordinate facts into a 
completed system, and we shall, therefore, in this prepare 
the way for an intelligent classification of all the elements 
of the system that may subsequently be attained. 

1. The general fact of the existence of mind. 

The doctrine of true and valid being, which determines 
and settles all dispute between idealists and materialists, 
nominalists and realists, constitutes the distinct science 
of Ontology, and which can be made to rest only on the 
conclusions of Rational Psychology. In all empirical 
science we begin with the assumption that the facts exist, 
and having thus begun with experience, it is not compe- 
tent from experience to prove the validity of those facts 
which are conditional for it. The qualities of substances 
and the exercises of agents alone appear in conscious- 
ness, and thus all tha/t experience can vouch for is the 
quality and the exercise, and not the essential being in 
which the qualities inhere and from which the exercises 

7 



74 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

spring. Permanent, substantial being, as the ground of 
all attributes and the source of all events, is assumed and 
not given in consciousness ; and there is thus an occasion 
for scepticism to come in, modified in various ways, and 
which can be excluded only through the most profound 
investigations of transcendental science. It is not the 
place in Empirical Psychology to state these sources and 
varied forms of scepticism, much less philosophically to 
exclude them ; suffice it to say the sources exist, and are 
exceedingly prolific of sceptical theories, and which must 
all be put over into the field of Rational Psychology. 
But passing all attention here to the appropriate investi- 
gations of an ontological science, we may give those par- 
ticulars that come within experience, and on which an 
Empirical Psychology must rest for the actual being of 
that mind, which is put as the agent of all those exercises 
that appear in consciousness. 

We are not conscious of what mind is, as we are con- 
scious of what an exercise is ; we know a thought, an 
emotion, and a volition, as we do not know the mind 
which thinks, feels and wills. The mind itself cannot 
appear in consciousness, as does its acts. But, while the 
mind itself does not appear in conciousness, and the 
different exercises are successively appearing and disap- 
pearing, there is that which does not come and go as the 
exercises arise and depart. One consciousness remains, 
and holds within itself all these fleeting appearances of 
thoughts, feelings and choices. There is also, in this 
one consciousness, the additional testimony that these 
exercises are not thrown in upon its field, as shadows 



GENERAL FACTS OF MIND. 75 

passing over a landscape, but that they come up from 
some nisus or energy that produces them from beneath ; 
and that when the thought appears, there has been a 
conscious energizing in its production; and when the 
thought vanishes and an emotion or a volition appears, 
there has been something which did not pass away with 
the thought, but energizes again in the emotion or the 
volition ; and thus that there is some entity as opposed to 
non-being, which abides and energizes in consciousness, 
And now, this fact of a permanent, perpetuating itself 
through all these changing exercises, is the first which 
we wish should be apprehended and noted. Some- 
thing is, while the varied exercises successively come 
and go upon the field of human consciousness. What 
this something is, the consciousness does not reveal ; but 
that it permanently is, in its unchanged identity, the 
consciousness does testify. It is as if the mirror could 
feel itself, and its repeated throes of reflection, while it 
can by no means envisage itself, but only that which 
stands before it. This conscious perduring of somewhat, 
as opposed to non-entity, we now take as a fact in expe- 
rience, and call it mind. We do not attempt to deter- 
mine what it is, though negatively we may say in many 
things what it is not ; all we need is to affirm, that it is ; 
and we then have permanent being which does not arise 
and vanish with its acts. 

2. This existence is not phenomenal nor ideal. 
The phenomena appear and disappear, arise and van- 
ish ; this does not appear, nor does it lose Itself when 
they depart ; but it holds them, though successive, still 



76 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

within its own unity, and determines them all to be its 
own. It perpetually is, in all its phenomena, and these 
phenomena are all from it. 

An effervescence is a result from chemical combina- 
tions ; a spark is produced in the collision of two hard 
bodies; but the effervescence and the spark come and 
go, as the modified states of what previously was, and 
are wholly phenomenal. The mind gives out its own 
phenomena without its own appearing, and itself origi- 
nates in no previous phenomenal compound. Motion is 
continued alteration in space of some permanent thing, 
and is only a peculiar state of that thing, and thus merely 
phenomenal. Mind is not a state of some other thing, 
but a somewhat that has its own successive states, while 
it perdures through them. A mathematical point, or 
line, is an intuition in pure space, and the product of the 
mmd's own agency, and is thus wholly ideal. But the 
mind perdures while its energizing may construct a 
thousand lines, or posit a thousand points in pure space, 
and remains the same through all its constructions. 

In this conscious permanency of being, that somewhat, 
which we have called mind, is taken wholly out from the 
list of fleeting phenomena ; and as percluring through all 
its ideal constructions, is not itself ideal. Though we 
cannot say what it is, yet we may say that it is neither 
phenomenal nor ideal. 

3. It has its conscious identity through all changes. 

The exercises of the mind arise and vanish, and are 
each separate and distinct from others in their appear- 
ance, but the same mind is in, and through, them all, 



GENERAL FACTS OF MIND. 7T 

and holds them all in its one consciousness. The thought 
which was yesterday, or last year, in consciousness, and 
the conscious thought of to-day, are both recognized as 
being in the same self-consciousness. The self-conscious- 
ness has not changed, while the exercises have been con- 
tinually coming and departing. The mind, thus, remains 
in its own identity, yesterday, to-day, and onward in to 
the future, perpetually the same mind. Through all 
development of its faculties ; in all its states ; the mind 
itself neither comes nor goes, but retains its self-same- 
ness through all changes. Its phenomenal experience 
varies in time, but itself perdures through time. 

4. Mind is essentially self-active. 

All matter is essentially inert, except as acted on by 
outward forces. Its inner constituting forces are bal- 
anced in exact counteraction, and hold itself in its own 
position, with a vis inertice that resists all action which 
would displace it. The movement of matter must be 
traced up, through all its propagations, to some first 
mover in a mind ; and out of this mind only, could the 
impulsive moving energy have originated. Nature, thus, 
acts upon nature, in its different parts, mechanically, as 
its different forces balance themselves in their own action, 
or in unbalanced movement obtrude one upon another. 
One portion of matter, impinging upon another, is a per- 
cussive force ; when suddenly expelling others that sur- 
round its own center, is an explosive force ; and when 
coming in combination with another, and giving off a 
third, is an effervescive force. But when we have super- 
added to all the forces in matter, whether gravitating, 



78 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

chemical or crystalline, a proper vital force- — which 
takes . up matter, penetrates it, assimilates, and incorpo- 
rates it, and thus builds up about itself its own organized 
body — -we have an existence self-active, self-developing, 
spiritual ; which originates motion from itself, and spon- 
taneously uses inert matter for its own ends. When this 
vital force rises from simple spontaneity in the plant, to 
that of sensation in the animal, and from this to distinct 
self-consciousness in man, we have the higher forms of 
the spiritual ; and, in the human mind, attain to a mani- 
fest discrimination of it from all that is material, in its 
inherent self-activity. 

The human mind has the consciousness of this self-en- 
ergizing. Its agency is properly its own, and originates 
in its own causality. As a created being, the original 
ground of the mind's existence is in God its Maker. It 
is dependent upon its Creator both, that it is, and for 
what it is ; but as created by God, it is endowed by him 
with a proper causality. It originates its own thoughts, 
emotions, and purposes ; and needs only the proper occa- 
sions for its activity, and this activity is spontaneously 
originated by it. This activity is circumscribed within 
given limits, and in its sphere of action it must have, 
also, certain occasions for action; yet within this sphere, 
and supplied with these occasions, it originates its own 
acts, and is conscious of its own nisus as it goes out in 
exercise. The occasions for thought do not cause the 
thinking ; the mind thinks from its own spontaneous caus- 
ality. Within such limits, and under such occasions, it 
is cause for originating thought and feeling. 



GENERAL FACTS OF MIND. 79 

This is quite a different conception from what is some- 
times termed passive power, and which may be predi- 
cated of all matter. This means merely capability of 
being moved; excluding the conception, altogether, of 
self-motion. It does not imply that there is properly 
latent power- — a force possessed*, but for the time lying 
dormant— the meaning is solely, capacity to receive the 
action of some efficient cause. This, we have said, may 
be predicated of all matter ; but precisely in this, is mind 
discriminated from matter. The movements of matter 
are communicated to it, the actions of mind may origi- 
nate in it. Consciousness testifies, not that there is such 
an agency of another as brings thought and feeling within 
it, but that my mind thinks, feels and wills. Mind may 
receive an action from without, and be the subject of 
influences imposed upon it, and even undergo changes to 
which itself is merely passive ; but it may also act from 
its own causality, and spontaneously originate its own 
changes. 

5. The mind discriminates itself from its objects. 

We say nothing here of the particular facts in the pro- 
cess of discriminating one object from another, and all 
objects from the mind itself; and nothing of the awaken- 
ing in self consciousness, which is consequential upon such 
discrimination ; but only mark the general fact itself, 
that the mind separates itself from all its objects of 
action. All mental action is conditioned to some object 
or end of action. We cannot think, without some con- 
tent of thought ; nor feel, without some object of emotion ; 
any more than we can see, or hear, without something 



80 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY* 

to be seen or heard. There must be the agent acting,, 
and the object as end of action ; and between these, the 
mind discriminates, and assigns to each, its own distinct 
identity. The object is known as other than the agent ; 
and thus the mind has the fact that it is, and that some 
other than it is, and that there is a separating line 
between them. 

Of itself, as acting being, it affirms that it is the sub- 
ject of the activity. The mind lies under the act, and is 
a ground for it. Of that which is the end of its action, 
it affirms that it is the object of the action. It lies 
directly in the way of the act, and meets it face to face. 
The act springs from the mind itself, as subject, and ter- 
minates in its end, as object. In this discrimination, we 
have occasion for the frequent use of the qualifying terms, 
subjective and objective. In the investigations which 
belong to psychology, we have so perpetually to refer to 
facts which relate to the mind, and those which relate to 
its ends of action, and such constant necessity to mark 
the characteristics which belong, in this relation, to the 
facts themselves, that we cannot dispense with these 
terms, except in the inconvenience of much circumlo- 
cution. Subjective applies to all relations in the mind 
itself; and objective to all relations in its ends of action. 
Thus, the gratification of the appetite, the prudential 
consideration of health, or the claims of duty, may be 
subjective motives to eat ; the article of food, as end of 
the act, and which is to consummate the subject's inten- 
tion in it, is the objective motive. When the mind is 
the end of its own action, as in all self-observation, it 



GENERAL FACTS OF MIND. 81 

becomes both subject and object. The mind, then, in 
all that relates to its own agency, is subjective ; and in 
all that relates to itself, as end of its action, is objective ; 
and the mind itself, spoken of in both relations together, 
is termed subject-object, 



CHAPTER III 



"PRIMITIVE facts of mind. 

We now have the one self-active mind, existing in con- 
nection with its organized body, and proceed to gather 
the specific facts which may be found in reference to 
it. A few of these specific facts are preliminary to all 
action in consciousness, and must first be found as condi- 
tional for all the phenomena that come within a known 
experience. Inasmuch as these facts must precede all 
conscious activity, and that without them no awakening 
in self-consciousness would be possible, they are termed 
primitive facts. In finding these, we shall have pre- 
pared the way for a specific method in attaining all other 
facts. These primitive facts embrace the following par- 
ticulars: 1. Sensation. 2. Consciousness. 3. The 
Mental States, as Capacities for knowing, feeling, and 
willing. 

What these are, and that they are primitive facts, will 
be manifest in the process of investigation. 

I. Sensation. The several distinct organs of sense, 
the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and the outer surface of the 
body in the skin, are connected by various appropriate 
nerves to the great receptacle of sensation in the brain. 
These serve as media of communication between the 
inner and the outer world. The living organism is per- 
petually penetrated with a sentient energy, and all afiec- 



PRIMITIVE EACTS OF MIND. 83 

tions in any part give their notice in the common senso- 
rium, and these are respectively modified in their parti- 
cular channels of communication, so that the sensations 
differ in coming through the different organs. The 
action of the outer world upon the living organ may be 
known as an impression, and such impression, met by 
the reaction of the living organ, constitutes what we now 
term sensation. It is fully completed within the living 
organism, and is not yet at all a perception. It is quite 
antecedent to the perceiving act, and a preliminary con- 
dition for it. 

To describe it more fully, we may note, that the rays 
of light from some outer object meet the eye, and make 
their impression in this living organ ; or, the undulations 
of air from the percussion of some sonorous body strike 
upon the tympanum of the ear, and make their impres- 
sion, also, in this living organ. In such a meeting of the 
outer and the inner, there arises a reciprocal affection ; 
each is modified by the other, and neither is as it was 
the moment before the contact. There has been action 
and reaction, and both that which has come into the 
organ and the organ itself have become changed. The 
ray of light has gone into the eye ; that ray is no longer 
a ray of light, and that eye is no longer an empty 
organ. So with the undulation that has gone into the 
ear ; it is wave of air no more, and it is empty ear no 
longer. The mutual modification has become completely 
a third somewhat, and which can have no name so 
appropriate as a content in the sense. It is not matter ; 
it is not object ; it is not anything yet perceived ; it is 



84 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

solely a content in the organ, out of which a perceived 
phenomenon is to be elaborated by a farther mental 
action. This identification of the reciprocal modifica- 
tions, of both the recipient organ and that which has 
been received, is precisely what is meant by sensa- 
tion. In the eye, it is no longer ray of light, nor is 
it yet color ; in the ear, it is no longer wave of air, nor 
is it yet sound ; it is solely a content in the eye or the 
ear, out of which an intellectual agency will produce a 
color or a sound. As yet it stands wholly in the living 
organism, and has not at all come out in the conscious- 
ness, and is the same thing for either blind instinct or a 
clear perceiving. The same holds true with all the other 
organs of sense. As living organism, an impression is 
made upon it from without, and both outer and inner are 
modified in the contact, and this is sensation, and is a 
content out of which is to come the particular pheno- 
menon of the smell, the taste, or the touch. 

Sensation, thus, precedes and is not given in conscious- 
ness. We do not see the contact of the rays of light 
with the eye, nor hear the percussion of the undulating 
air upon the ear, nor do we perceive the mutual modifi- 
cations which are thus induced ; they give only the con- 
tent in sensation, which is subsequently brought to be a 
distinct and definite phenomenon in consciousness. Still, 
these are facts which may be verified from the deduc- 
tions of experience. A vivid flash of light or a stunning 
percussion injures and pains the organ, and too intense 
and protracted use wearies it, and a dissected eye gives 
its image, and a detached ear, with its organic elements, 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 85 

gives its movements and percussions to our observation. 
We learn that the affection occurs, from what we other- 
ways know ; and from the facts thus attained, it is com- 
petent to infer the whole fact of this sensible content. - 

It is important to distinguish sensation, as a primitive 
fact, from all conscious feeling which comes in subse- 
quently, and by occasion of the sensation. The impres- 
sion upon the organ of sense may be termed a feeling, 
but inasmuch as it is antecedent to all consciousness of 
it, such feeling can be blind only and operate solely as 
an instinct. The feeling that comes after the sensation, 
and by occasion of it through a perception, is wholly in 
consciousness, and influences the mind as an intelligent 
motive. It is properly an emotion. Thus, music excites 
a peculiar feeling as an agreeable emotion; but such 
feeling is completely separated from all blind feeling in 
sensation. The moving air, which propagated the instru- 
mental vibrations to the ear, on coming in contact with 
that organ, made its impression on it and induced an 
affection in it, and by reason of the mutual action and 
reaction of air and organ a content for a sound was 
given. But, as yet, this is not perceived. The sensa- 
tion is in its chaotic state, without form and distinctness, 
until the spiritual intelligence brood over it, and construct 
it into a definite tone in the consciousness. All the 
tones and their relation in harmony must be so perceived, 
and a deeper insight into the harmony of tones must 
apprehend the tune that is being carried along in them, 
and then the living sentiment which this tune expresses 
must be clearly caught by the mind ; and only till such a 

8 



86 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

long process has gone on beyond the feeling as sensation^ 
can the agreeable feeling as emotion from the music come 
out. The blind feeling as sensation, and the distinct 
feeling as agreeable emotion in consciousness, are wholly 
unlike, and in the processes of mental activity are far 
apart from each other. 

This discrimination is more specially important in the 
sense of touch, as the sensation and emotion are more 
liable to be here confounded. We say of a certain body, 
it feels smooth, or hard, or warm. But such smoothness, 
or hardness, or warmth, is already completed perception, 
giving distinct quality in the consciousness, and for which 
the sensation, as content in the organ, must have been 
an antecedent condition. The smoothness here is a per- 
ception, and not at all a proper feeling; and we only 
say of the body, it feels smooth, to indicate that the 
perception is one of touch, and not that the perception 
is at all an emotion. This perception of smoothness is 
the occasion of an agreeable feeling as emotion. Thus, 
my fingers come hi contact with a piece of velvet, and 
the action and reaction is a content as a blind sensation. 
By the proper intellectual activity, I bring the sensation 
into complete perception, and I have then the distinct 
phenomenon in consciousness of the quality of smooth- 
ness ; and to mark the perception as that of the touch, 
I may say of the velvet, not that it looks smooth, but 
that it feels so. But as yet we have not reached any 
feeling as emotion. It is only as I find the perceived 
smoothness of velvet to be agreeable, and thus the 
perception awakening an emotion, that I come to the 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 87 

consciousness of anything that is properly a feeling. I 
then slide my hand over the velvet, not that I may 
perceive its smoothness, but that I may feel the agree- 
able emotion it occasions* 

Sensation is, therefore, never to be taken as feeling, 
except in a blind and unconscious state. It is not an 
emotion, for that is awakened only in the agreeableness, 
or the contrary, of the thing perceived ; it is not even a 
perception in touch, which we say feels thus, for that is 
a quality brought out in the consciousness, and for which 
the sensation was an antecedent condition. The sensa- 
tion may be perfect, and a complete content of sense be 
thus given in the organ, but if the requisite intellectual 
agency in attention does not follow, there will be neither 
a perception nor an emotion in the consciousness. Sen- 
sation may be, with no conscious emotion following it. 

The pure mind itself has no distinct organs that may 
receive any impressions given ; but it may properly be said 
of mere mental agency, that the mind affects itself in all 
its varieties of action, and thus gives to itself a sensation 
which is a proper content for a perception. The mind, 
as such, is thus taken as an organ of sense, and any 
internal movement is an impression upon it, and thus 
inducing an affection in it ; and such affections are each 
as much an occasion for the proper intellectual process to 
result in the perception of a thought, an emotion, or a voli- 
tion, as an affection in a bodily organ is an occasion for 
perceiving a color, a sound, or a smell. The one mind is 
diffused through all the bodily organism, and becomes 
modified in the impressions upon bodily organs from the 



88 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

outer world ; and such affections may be known as exter- 
nal or organic sensation: the same mind is also modi- 
fied, in the impressions it makes upon itself in its own 
agency ; and such affections may be known as internal 
or inorganic sensation. In each case, the modifications 
resulting from the impressions constitute a proper con- 
tent, which may subsequently, be matured into complete 
perception. 

II. Consciousness. This is the source of all convic- 
tion in experience, and, as general in the human race, 
has been put by us as the ultimate criterion in all cases 
of disputed facts, which may be used in an Empirical 
Psychology. We have been frequently referring to it in 
the previous chapters, and have rested on the common 
acceptation of what consciousness is, and the faith which 
all are constrained to put in its testimony, without any 
attempt to give an explanation of it. The place has now 
been reached for a distinct exposition and apprehension 
of consciousness, as one of the facts in a system of Empi- 
rical Psychology, inasmuch as it stands in the order of 
primitive facts proximately precedent to all perception. 
When any mental activity has been completed, conscious- 
ness must still intervene, or no apprehension of that 
activity can be effected. 

Consciousness has been very differently apprehended 
by different writers, and certainly not seldom misappre- 
hended. Some have considered it as scarcely to be 
distinguished from personal identity ; others, as a sepa- 
rate faculty for knowing the action of all other mental 
powers ; and others, again, as the complement and con- 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 89 

nection of ail mental exercises, inasmuch as they are all 
held hi one consciousness. Consciousness is doubtless 
ever one in the same person, (a few cases of morbid 
experience alone excepted,) otherwise some actions would 
be in one consciousness, and some in another, and the 
man's life could never be brought into one experience, 
But this does by no means confound consciousness in 
personal identity, for identity continues in and through 
a great number of states of unconsciousness. Nor may 
it be assumed as a distinct faculty for knowing the opera- 
tions of other faculties, for when intellectually I know 
anything, this would oblige the consciousness to an act of 
knowing that I know, and which, as knowing act, would 
still need another to know it, and thus on endlessly with- 
out finding a first and conclusive knowing act. And 
merely to say, that it is a medium in which all other 
mental facts and states are connected, is still to explain 
nothing, and really to have said nothing to any purpose. 
These different, and in some cases at least, erroneous 
conceptions of consciousness, indicate that there is some 
radical difficulty in attaining the precise fact of conscious- 
ness. It secures that other facts shall appear, while 
itself does not appear. 

If, instead of attempting to conceive consciousness as 
a distinct mental faculty, or in any way an agent putting 
forth specific exercises, we will consider it under the ana- 
logy of an inner illumination, we may both avoid many 
difficulties and gain some great advantages. When any 
organic impression is given and thus a content in sensa- 
tion is attained, the self-active mind has at once an occa- 

8* 



90 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

sion for spontaneously going out to complete the percep- 
tion. By an appropriate intellectual activity, hereafter to 
be described, the precise quality and its exact limits are 
constructed, and the object is thus made distinct and 
definite ; and now, if all this be conceived as accom- 
plished within the mind's own light, no farther agency 
will be needed. The distinguishing and defining of the 
content in sensation is all that is necessary to make it an 
object, and when it thus appears under this mental illu- 
mination, it is the same as saying that it appears in 
consciousness, or that the mind is conscious of it. The 
conception is not of a faculty, but of a light; not of an 
action, but of an illumination ; not of a maker of pheno- 
mena, but of a revealer of them as already made by the 
appropriate intellectual operation; and as thus con- 
structed in the illumhiated mental sphere, they at once 
appear to the mind, and the fact of perception is con- 
summated. The content hi sensation, which has been 
distinguished and defined, appears under this illunfination 
as the objective; and the agency, accomplishing this 
work, appears in the same fight as the subjective ; and 
thus both the object and subject, the not-self and self, 
are together given in the same revelation of conscious- 
ness. The reflection that the subjective agency is in 
the self, and that the objective content is from some 
other than self, is a direct discrimination of the self from 
the not-self — a finding of myself — an awakening in self- 
consciousness. 

Whenever the mind loses this discrimination between 
the subjective and the objective, there is the loss of self- 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIHB, 91 

consciousness. The infant has the sensation and a grow- 
ing perfection in the appropriate constructing agency; 
but for some length of time the infant is without self-con-* 
sciousness, and acts only from instinct. The animal 
observes and attends, distinguishes and defines, some- 
times more acutely and accurately than man; but the 
animal never completely separates itself: from its objects^ 
and thus never fully attains itself in clear self-conscious^ 
ness. So in somnambulism, a man may execute many 
most surprising transactions; walk along a precipice, 
upon the roofs of houses, climb towers and steeples, and 
accurately guide and keep himself harmless in all these 
dangerous positions ; because he distinguishes and defines 
his sensations exactly, while he never distinguishes him* 
self from his objects, and is thus wholly lost to all self- 
consciousness. So under intense excitement, the man 
whose dwelling is on fire may act most energetically ; 
but in this loss of self-possession, he may often dash 
the frailest articles of furniture together, and throw 
his crockery and mirrors from the chamber windows. 
Under violent passion also, the outrageous conduct of 
some men often show, that they have wholly lost them- 
selves ; and so also with the ravings and delirium of a 
burning fever. 

Here too, lies the explanation of much of the wonders 
and modern miracles of animal magnetism. The mes* 
meric sleep, by whatever cause induced, unlike natu- 
ral sleep, quickens and greatly intensifies the mental 
agency in distinguishing and limiting the sensations, but 
leaves wholly out the action of self-discrimination, and 



92 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

the slightest suggestions and influences control the sub- 
ject, who is thus put completely within the power of the 
operator. In all these cases, there is simply the absence 
of self-consciousness — the person is beside himself. But 
in syncope, apoplexy, etc., there is not only the loss of 
self-discrimination, but also of all power of distinguishing 
and limiting the sensations ; and when the lesion goes to 
the destruction of the power of sensation itself, it then 
becomes death. That there is sensation distinguished 
and defined, and also self-discrimination, is altogether the 
great fact that there is self-consciousness. In the one 
illumination of consciousness, the object, and that it is my 
object, are both given. The process of the thought, as 
it develops itself in reflection, to attain the truth in the 
valid being of the self and its objects is wholly for 
Rational Psychology; but so far as experience is our 
guide to facts, we have the process, as above, in that 
mental illumination which reveals the subjective and the 
objective together. Consciousness is therefore " the light 
of all our seeing." 

The difficulty that has always been found in deter- 
mining what consciousness is, at once hereby explains 
itself. It is sufficient to vouch for itself, that it is ; but 
it is not competent to reveal within itself what it is. It 
is a light in which other things appear, but is too pure 
that it should itself be seen. It reveals all that can be 
brought within it, but it cannot be put in any position 
where it may represent itself. Without it, nothing can 
appear — it is thus primitively conditional for all percep- 
tion — but while in it the mind sees all other things, 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MOD. 93 

there is no light higher than it, by which the mind can 
see the consciousness itself. 

III. Mbxtal states, as capacities foe exowing, 
feelixg, axd willixg. The self-active mind is perpet- 
ually energizing in varied specific exercises, which are 
each readily distinguished in consciousness. Some of 
these exercises are perceptions, reflections, recollections, 
comparisons, abstractions, etc., all of which are in some 
way subservient to the process of hioicing. Others are 
sympathies, affections, emotions, passions, etc., all included 
in some department of feeling. Others, again are pre- 
ferences, choices, purposes, volitions, etc., and all in some 
way concerned in ivitting. The one mind is the source 
of all these different exercises, and must put them forth 
at separate times and on different occasions, and must 
therefore in some way modify itself conformably to its 
diverse operations. As one agent, in the several ways 
of knowing, feeling, and willing, the one self-active mind 
must be in different states, in order to put forth the exer- 
cises which are peculiar to each kind of operation. It 
may here be assumed, that all single exercises of the 
human mind may be included in one or the other of these 
kinds of operation, and thus stand connected with either 
knowing, or feeling, or willing. Such assumption will be 
subsequently verified, but in taking it for the present, it 
will be competent to say, that inasmuch as the states of 
mind must vary as the kinds of general operation vary, 
so there must be the three general states of mind, as 
knowing, feeling, and willing. 



94 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

In all human experience, there is often the conscious- 
ness that the mind is unprepared for certain exercises, to 
which at other times there is a readiness. At one time 
the man thinks with difficulty, and at another time with 
great facility. When absorbed in thought, there is a 
conscious unpreparedness in the mind, to open itself to 
the flow of emotion ; and when overwhelmed with feeling, 
the mind is prepared for neither patient thought nor 
stedfast resolution; and thus generally, if the mmd is 
prepared for one kind of operation, it is in that unpre- 
pared for another kind. A general state of mind is 
necessary, therefore, as preliminary and preparatory to 
all specific activity. The general state, in fact, becomes 
a capacity for the specific acts included within that kind 
of operation. We may say, in general, that the mind 
has the capacity for knowing, feeling, and willing ; but 
a direct capacity to specific action, under either kind of 
operation, is not attained, except as the mind goes into 
its state appropriate for such action, and this direct pro- 
duction of the capacity is one of the primitive facts of 
mind. We may be conscious of many important facts 
connected with this direct capacity for specific action, 
and the clear apprehension of them will prepare us 
directly for the determination of the peculiar method 
necessary in attaining and classifying all the other facts 
of mind. 

The mind, as self-active, produces itself into several 
different general states, which thus become each respec- 
tively a capacity for specific single exercises. It is here 
assumed that all single acts may originate in one or the 



• 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 95 

other of these general states, and which states we will 
here denominate, from their different kinds of capacity, 
as — the Intellectual State; the Emotive State; 
and the Willing- State. These we will now farther 
investigate. 

1. These general states may be clearly discriminated 
in consciousness. 

When you take your seat before a public speaker and 
he rises to address you, there may be a very clear con- 
sciousness that your mind has gone out into a general state, 
before a single word has been uttered. There is, as 
yet, no specific exercise, but only a state of mind induc- 
ing a capacity for particular exercises. It is not atten- 
tion, for there is no voice to which the attention may be 
applied ; it is not perception, for there is no content in 
the sense to be apprehended ; it is not thought, for there 
has been no thought communicated or awakened. It is 
simply a readiness to act, in any and all of these specific 
exercises, as the occasion shall offer : and is therefore, a 
state of mind capacitating for knowing, when the occa- 
sion for knowing shall have been given. It is, thus, an 
Intellectual State. So also, with an audience, before the 
curtain rises which covers some scenic representation; 
each mind has put itself in a state to know, when any 
thing shall be uncovered to its perception. And so, 
again, in the expectation of some musical performance ; 
before the sounds have been given, and the opportunity 
afforded for attending to their inner meaning in the tune 
they will embody, the mind has already gone into an 
intellectual state in reference thereto. This may also 



96 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

be true in reference to any other sense ; as the toucli ? 
taste or smell ; and in reference to all mental action for 
knowing in any way ; as remembering, thinking, reflect- 
ing, etc. The self-activity goes out into an intellectual 
state, as preparative for any specific exercises that may 
be concerned in knowing ; and when the conditions are 
given, the specifice exercises for knowing are then pro- 
duced, and the apprehension of the object or theme is 
consummated. 

If now, the mind maintain itself wholly in the intel- 
lectual state, and exhaust all its activity in the intensity 
to know, there will be no preparation for emotion. But 
when, instead of abiding in the intellectual state, it 
opens itself for the coming up of the emotions which the 
discourse, the scene, or the tune, may be adapted to 
excite ; there will in this be the consciousness of quite a 
different state, and that in it there is the capacity to 
quite a different set of exercises, from all that is con- 
cerned in knowing. Simply as having gone into the 
intellectual state, the mind was not thus prepared to 
feel ; and if it should wholly absorb itself in intellectual 
action, it would have no capacity to feel, and no specific 
emotions would be exercised. The self-activity must 
produce itself into quite a different state, which we have 
termed the Emotive State, or its action would be a know- 
ing without feeling. So also, in solitary thought and 
silent speculation. I may be intent merely to know ; or 
I may pass out of the state adapted only to dry thought, 
and as3uine a state which is also in readiness to feel ; 
and my intense speculation will then become a sweet 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OP MIND. 97 

meditation, in which the mind will not only be filled with 
thought, but will also overflow "with emotion. 

But we will carry out this discrimination still farther. 
You may imagine yourself to have been among the audi- 
ence, which listened to the great Athenian Orator in one 
of his terrible Phillipics. In an intellectual state, you 
apprehended his exordium, so appropriate, so captivating; 
his narration of topics and arrangement of matter, so 
skilful, so logical ; his delineation of acts and events, so 
graphic, so consecutive; and his whole argument, so com- 
prehensive, so conclusive ; that your mind was elevated 
and filled with the thought which revealed and proved, 
and made you to know so much. But you did not rest 
merely in knowing. You opened your mind to emotion, 
and felt the glow of patriotism, the deep sense of national 
honor, the shame of servitude, the disgrace of cowardice, 
and burning indignation against the tyrant. But neither 
did you rest in this state of deep emotion. In your self- 
activity, you roused every energy of your enkindled 
spirit, and held all ready for the most prompt and deter- 
mined execution, while you shouted with the thousands of 
Athens — "Let us march against Philip." You found 
in yourself the capacity for a strong will, and the putting 
forth the most strenuous exertions. This last state of 
willing is clearly distinct in the consciousness from either 
of the former. 

As concisely illustrative of these three distinct general 
states, I adduce the following examples from the sacred 
Scriptures. When Cornelius had sent for Peter by the 
direction of an angel, and had already received him into 

9 



98 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

his house, he says: "Now, therefore, are we all here pre- 
sent before God, to hear all things that are commanded 
thee of God." — Acts x, 33. They were in the intel- 
lectual state. Again, the Psalmist in great distress, 
longs for the communion and manifested approbation of 
God, and waits for the emotions which his spiritual pre- 
sence would induce, and he says, " My soul waiteth for 
the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning." 
— Ps. cxxx, 6. Here is as manifestly the emotive state. 
And finally, when Saul had been stricken to the earth 
by the brightness of a miraculous vision, and he found 
himself ready to undertake any duty divinely commanded, 
he cries, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" — Acts, 
ix, 6. A clear case is given in this of the willing state. 

2. The occasions for going out in such general 
capacities. 

An original peculiarity of mind may be an occasion 
for these general mental states, in reference' to particular 
ends of action. To some minds it is natively congenial 
to follow a particular calling, or to pursue a particular 
branch in literature, science, or art. The poet, mathema- 
tician, painter, or sculptor, seem often to have an innate 
propensity each to his special employment ; and different 
trades and occupations often find such as have their 
natural adaptations to the particular pursuits, In all 
such cases, an occasion is given in the original bias of 
the mind for the self-activity to go readily out into a 
capacity both to know, to feel, and to will, in reference 
to the given end. 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 99 

In the same way, the peculiar temperament, in the 
constitutional formation, may be an occasion for the self- 
active mind, to put itself in a readiness to know, feel and 
will in certain congenial directions. Prompting occa- 
sions also, are often given, from the thousand contingent 
circumstances in which the man may be placed, and from 
the casual incidents that fall around him, by which the 
mind is induced to put itself in a new attitude, and go 
out into a different general state from that previously 
occupied. Under any one of these conditions, a sponta- 
neous movement puts the mind, at once, in the appro- 
priate state for particular acts of knowing, feeling, or 
willing, in reference to a particular end. 

Sometimes we are conscious of an effort of will to hold 
ourselves in readiness for specific acts toward specific 
objects, and such acts of the will become themselves an 
occasion for the self-activity to put itself into the wished 
for capacity, But in all such occasions it is important 
to note, that the state is not itself a volition; it is not the 
direct product of the will, but immediately produced by 
the self-activity on occasion of the will prompting to it. 
Just as an act of recollection may be prompted by an 
occasion of willing, while the remembering is not at all a 
volition, but the spontaneous product of the self-active 
mind in recalling its past perceptions. In all cases, the 
general state as capacity is attained, by the spontaneous 
movement of the self-active mind into it ; and whether 
by occasion of native mental peculiarity, or of constitu- 
tional temperament, or casual circumstances, or an effort 
of will, the production is immediately from the sponta- 



100 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

neons self-activity. Willing may give occasion for the 
movement, but no act of will can produce the state either 
to know, to feel, or to will. It may very often be wished, 
w T hen the will cannot attain it, and thus volition is often 
not an adequate occasion for it. A ready state to know, 
or to feel, or to will, hi a specific direction, is often as 
impossible to be reached by willing, as an act of clear 
recollection, or a state of sleep. Whatever the occasion 
given, the self-activity goes directly out in the production 
of the respective capacity, and spontaneously projects 
itself from one state into another. As the first act of 
knowing, in the infant mind, must have been spontane- 
ous, with no occasion of a previous volition, so is every 
general state spontaneous, though often by occasion of 
volition. 

8. The order of connection in these general mental 
capacities. 

The self-active mind produces in itself these different 
capacities according to an invariable order, and while the 
law for such order cannot be brought into consciousness, 
the fact is manifestly given in common experience. This 
order, as given in fact, it is quite important fully to 
attain. 

The intellectual state is immediately from the self- 
activity. — On occasion being given, the mind by its spon- 
taneous activity, produces itself directly into an intel- 
lectual state, and stands prepared to act specifically in 
any exercise connected with knowing in that particular 
direction. This may as well be from a state to know in 
reference to a different object, as from a state of feeling, 



PEIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 101 

*or of willing. The mind, in a state to know all that a 
speaker may say, is not in that also in a state to know 
the music which an orchestra may be about to perform. 
The mind, in a state for the speaker, would be conscious 
of a manifest change, if the speaker should be suddenly 
removed and the orchestra at once presented. But in 
such case, and in all cases, the mind does not need to go 
into an emotive state, nor a willing state, in order that it 
may take an intellectual state. Whatever be its present 
state, it needs only the proper occasion, and it immedi- 
ately produces itself into the required intellectual state. 

The emotive state is attained only in connection with 
the intellectual state. — Emotion cannot be, except the 
object in which the emotion is to terminate be first given. 
But this object is given only as it is known ; and it is 
known only in an intellectual state ; and thus without a 
•state to know, there cannot be a state to feel. If I am 
not ready to know any object, I cannot be in readiness 
for any emotion which is to terminate in that object. 
This is quite manifest in consciousness not only, but also 
appears in daily observation and experience. The mind, 
that reluctates any emotion, directly evades all occasion 
for bringing that object into consciousness; and the 
mind, that rejoices in any feeling, seeks also to keep the 
object within knowledge. 

A most kind and benevolent provision in human nature 
is based wholly on this fact, and designed to obviate the 
*evil consequences of any excessive and absorbing pas- 
sion. When the object in which the passion terminates 
is vividly present in the mind, the emotion rises in its 

9* 



102 I EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

highest intensity, and thus becomes a violent paroxysm of 
passion, and then bursts from its own fullness, and flows 
off in its own peculiar channels. Deep grief vents itself 
in sobbing and tears, or, in its most passionate excite- 
ment, rends the garments, beats the breast and tears the 
hair ; while joy overflows in laughter and singing, and 
when most excited, boisterously leaps and dances. In 
proportion to the intensity of the passion, is the violence 
of its explosion, and hi this very outburst is the provision 
for its relief. The object is by this, for the moment, 
thrown out of the consciousness ; the image which occa- 
sions the excitement fades away, or for the time is wholly 
vanished, and the emotion ebbs accordingly. Succes- 
sive ebullitions of passion, may thus occur, and overflow 
again and again in reference to the same object; but 
this violent paroxysm is nature's kind interposition to 
snatch the object temporarily from the view, that its 
tides of feeling may not overwhelm the spirit. How 
salutary this is, may be estimated from the sad conse- 
quences of a passion which finds no such vent from 
nature, and leaves the fixed attention concentrated upon 
the object without cessation ! The reason is overpow- 
ered, and often incurable madness succeeds. 

The willing state is attained only in connection tvith 
both the intellectual and the emotive states. — A choice, 
or any act of the will, demands an object in which it 
may terminate, as truly as does an emotion. We can 
not choose except as there is something in the conscious- 
ness on which the choice may fix itself. There must 
thus be some object as known, and thus the necessity for 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 103 

an intellectual state. But the mere dry apprehension 
of an object is not a sufficient occasion for a choice. 
There is nothing which can properly be called a motive 
or reason. Some feeling must be awakened towards the 
object, either of desire or obligation, or the conditions 
for a volition are not given. We cannot choose, unless 
there be something congenial to be attained in the choice, 
and this can occur only in an emotive state. As well no 
object, as an object which awakens no feeling of interest, 
or of duty. The willing state, as capacity for putting 
forth any voluntary exercises, must thus be preceded by 
both an object known, and an object felt, and must thus 
be occasioned by both an intellectual and an emotive 
state. In these only is the condition of willing at all 
given. 

4. These general states of mind may be blended in 
the consciousness , but not confounded. 

The intellectual state may, under certain conditions, 
be taken by itself alone, but the emotive state cannot 
stand out separate from the intellectual state. So soon 
as an intellectual state should cease, the object of know- 
ledge must fall away from the consciousness ; and as this 
was the end in which the emotion terminated, with the 
loss of the object, the feeling must also become extinct. 
We are quite conscious, that only in the object known 
can any feeling be maintained ; and thus, that except 
an intellectual state blend with the emotive, the condi- 
tion for the latter cannot be given. The willing state, 
moreover, must stand blended with both the intellectual 
and emotive states, and cannot find its conditions for 



104 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

being taken, except as both, the knowing and the feeling 
are at the same time in exercise. Only as the object is 
in consciousness, can there by any emotion; and only as 
some emotive exercise is put forth, can there be any 
occasion for willing, inasmuch as no volition can be, with, 
out some motive in the susceptibility ; and thus a state 
of willing must blend with both a state of knowing and a 
state of feeling. The intellectual state may be in com- 
plete isolation ; the emotive state cannot be, except as 
blended with the intellectual ; and the willing state can 
not be, except as in combination with both the intel- 
lectual and the emotive states. 

But, when thus blended, they are by no means con- 
founded in the consciousness. We can readily discrimi- 
nate the one from the others, even when they all stand 
in combination. "When I choose one from two or more 
objects, I may be distinctly conscious of both knowing 
the object, and of feeling an interest in it, at the same 
time that my will goes out in an executive act to attain 
it. They are in exercise together; and the general 
states, which capacitate for their exercise, are also 
together; and I am conscious of their blended being, at 
the same time that I discriminate the one from the other* 
The blending is without confusion ; as in the white light 
all the colors are given, but which are also readily dis- 
criminated through the prismatic medium. Knowing, 
feeling, and willing all coalesce in every volition, and yet 
are all distinguished, each from each, in the conscious- 
ness ; and the general states, as capacities for each, alike 
coalesce, and are alike distinguished. 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 105 

5. These capacities may ordinarily be perpetuated by 
a stedfast purpose. 

As before shown, a native bias of mind and a consti- 
tutional temperament may stand as permanent occasions 
for a state of knowing, feeling, and willing, in that direc- 
tion to which nature prompts. The native artist is ever 
prompt to know, feel, and will in reference to his favorite 
topics. The native poet, or mathematician, is perma- 
nently in readiness for all specific exercises, which relate 
to his congenial pursuit. But aside from all constitu- 
tional bias, an act of will may be an occasion for the self- 
active mind to produce within itself the required general 
capacity. Commonly,, by a decided voluntary act, the 
mind can be put into either the intellectual, emotive, or 
willing state ; and though the state is not itself willed, 
yet is it induced by occasion of willing. And as the 
state was induced by occasion of a voluntary act, so. 
ordinarily, may it be perpetuated, by making the volun- 
tary action to become a stedfast purpose. This is quali- 
fied by saying, ordinarily; for there are sometimes 
exempt and extraordinary cases, when no volition can 
be made an occasion for either of the general states of 
mind now contemplated. 

As an illustration, the presentation of a book may be 
supposed, and this may be an occasion for the mind, 
either spontaneously or through a volition, to go into a 
state to know the thoughts of the author as the reading 
of the book shall progress from page to page. This state 
may be perpetuated, to an indefinite extent, by fixing a 
stedfast purpose in reference to it ; and w T hile the atten- 



106 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

tion might readily be diverted, and the intellectual state 
in reference to the book be transient, if all was left to the 
control of mere passing occasions, yet this settled pur- 
pose may hold the mind intent to know, until the reading 
of the book is finished. So, also, with th feel 

the emotions, which the meaning of the I : )k may c; 

: and voluntarily to put in practice, what the book 
may enjoin ; a settled purpose may perpetuate all these 

ies, and prevent the mind from passing off into other 
engagements. Thus, also, a man may fix on some pur- 
suit for years, or for life: and in this aettl 
that fixes a perpetual calling, an occasion will be given 
for a perpetual state of readiness, to know, feel, and will, 
all that may at any time be disclc- bearing upon 

the success of that encasement. 

Even against the prompting of occasional circumstance.-, 
or the native bias of constitutional temperament, a Strang 
and decided purpose may give the condition in which the 
self-active mind shall go into a permane be, to kn : -. 

feel, and will, as would otherwise be wholly uncongenial. 
Thus, a man may discipline his own powers, and cor: 
any constitutional biases, and educate himself to very 
different habits of thought, emotion and execution, from 
sach as would Lave been prompted by circumstance- 
native inclinations. Thus. also, when any perpetuated 
have been long retained, and habits of thought, 
emotion, and practice have been form; ng and 

resolute will n an occasion for inducing general 

:es of knowing, feeling, and willing in qtdte different 
: and thereby induce to the breaking up of old 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 10T 

habits, and of forming others that shall be very differ- 
ent. No habit of thought, $ r feeling, or acting, is itself 
directly willed ; the volition may become an occasion for 
the mind \o pass into particular aptitudes for knowing or 
feeling, and the repetition of consequent successive exer- 
cises forms and confirms the habit. 

6. No general state will be permanent, except by a 
settled purpose. 

"When constitutional biases become an occasion for 
specific habits of thought, feeling and willing, the consti- 
tutional inclination is soon also seen to have induced a 
corresponding determination of the will, and thus a moral 
no less than a constitutional disposition is settled. A 
change henceforth, if effected, must not only counteract 
constitutional temperament, but also deep seated pur- 
poses. " Old things must pass away, and all things 
become new." But where no particular bias is given 
from nature, and only passing circumstances prompt the 
mind to go into its general states, these will be especially 
fluctuating and unstable, if not held in one direction by 
occasion of a stedfast purpose. One state comes and 
goes, and others follow in fleeting succession, as summer 
shadows chase each other over the landscape, and the 
whole mental activity is in continual ebb and flow, with 
no steady current or perpetuated direction. Spontane- 
ously will the self-active mind project itself from one 
state to another, as passing occasions are given, and 
never continue long in one stay. 

Should any mind attempt to hold itself in suspense 
between two given ends of action, with no stedfast pur- 



108 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

pose in either direction, there will soon be a painful con- 
sciousness of the impracticability of maintaining such a 
position. The activity will soon have slipped away from 
all direction to either object, and the exercises of thought, 
and feeling, and willing, are soon going out on wholly 
different ends. But when, after due deliberation, a 
stedfast purpose is taken in reference to any object, this 
becomes at once an occasion for the mind to go into a 
permanent state in reference to that object, and to know, 
feel, and will, whatever the interests of that purpose may 
demand. It is not necessary that the purpose be a per- 
petual energizing of the will ; the one fixed purpose has 
been the occasion for the self-activity to go into a perma- 
nent state ; and, except such permanent purpose be 
taken, the mind will not hold in a perpetuated capacity 
for either knowledge, emotion, or volition. Nothing 
makes the man consistently stedfast, in either intel- 
lectual character, affection, or voluntary action, but the 
perpetual dominion of a 'deep and stedfast purpose. He 
is else " double-minded," and of course " unstable in all 
his ways." 



In the foregoing General Facts we have one, perma- 
nent, self-active mind ; and in the Primitive Facts, we 
have sensation, consciousness, and the self-active mind 
as competent to go spontaneously into the states which 
capacitate it specifically to know, to feel, and to will. 
The one mind is the actor in all ; but it must pass into 
successive states, in order that it may produce within 
itself the capacity to particular exercises in either. We 



PRIMITIVE FACTS OF MIND. 109 

now affirm, that the self-active mind is competent to pro- 
duce in itself general states or capacities for these three 
modes of activity, to know, to feel, and to will ; these 
three, no more and no less. They all exist, as thus 
produced, in consciousness ; and we are also quite con- 
scious of our impotence to induce within us the capaci- 
ties for any other varieties of mental activity. We can 
act in no other capacities than as intellectual, sentient, 
and voluntary beings. Aside from the primitive facts 
already attained, and which are precedent to and prepa- 
ratory for these, all human mental agency is confined to 
knowing, feeling, and willing. We have in this the 
natural order for our psychological classification. Many 
have forced all mental facts within two divisions, substan- 
tially those of knowing and willing, though using different 
ways of expressing them ; but the appeal is here confi- 
dently made to common consciousness, that the exercises 
in the emotive state are different in kind from the exer- 
cises of either knowing or willing, and that a sharp line 
of discrimination stands between these facts. As all 
emotion and sentiment differs from all knowledge and 
volition, so it differs from sensation, properly so called. 
Sensation precedes perception, and is a necessary condi- 
tion for it ; emotion succeeds the perception, and springs 
by direct occasion from it. We need to find a capacity 
for mental acts which is not at all employed in knowing 
or in willing, nor at all implied in organic sensation. A 
confounding of things which so much differ can only 
induce perplexity, absurdity, and error. The following 
is the true order of Mental Classification : — 

10 



110 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

The capacity for knowing, is — The Intellect. 
The capacity for feeling, is — The Susceptibility. 
The capacity for willing, is — The Will. 



I. The Intellect. . . . 


( 1. The Sense. 

< 2. The Understanding. 

( 3. The Reason. 


II. The Susceptibility. 
HI. The Will 


( 1. The Animal. 

J 2. The Rational. 

( 3. The Spiritual. 

( 1. Immanent Preferences, 

I 2. Governing Purposes. 



3. Desultory Volitions. 
IV. The competency of man, with such capaci- 



ties, TO attain the end of his being, 



FIEST DIVISION 



THE INTELLECT. 



The Mind, as Intellect, is inclusive of tlie entire capa- 
city for knowing, whether in direct perception, conclud- 
ing in judgments, or comprehending in universal princi- 
ples. All mental exercises subservient to any form of 
knowing, and which come clearly within consciousness, 
are facts belonging to the intellect. Conception, recollec- 
tion, association, abstraction, comparison, etc., all come 
within this division, as being somehow concerned in the 
processes of knowing. The products of the intellect, 
when they are wholly subjective, and the creations of 
mind itself, are termed Intellections ; and when they 
apply to an objective existence, they are termed Cogni- 
tions. Sometimes this distinction is made by calling the 
former pure cognitions, and the latter empirical cogni- 
tions. Sometimes, also, the cognitions are characterised 
from the different functions of knowing, as sense-cogni- 
tion, understanding-cognition, or reason-cognition. 

The mind, as intellectual capacity, has three distinct 
functions of operation, and from which we are to recog- 



112 THE INTELLECT. 

nize three different Faculties for knowing, each peculiar 
to itself in its forms of knowledge and the kind of cogni- 
tions attained. All confounding of one with others must 
necessarily induce obscurity into the system of psycho- 
logy, and ultimately disclose itself in great error both 
philosophical and practical. This exact analysis will 
especially evince its necessity, in the coming Divisions 
of the Susceptibility and the Will, nor can either be cor- 
rectly apprehended without it. These three different 
Faculties in the one capacity for knowing, are : 1. The 
Sense, 2. The Understanding. 3. The Reason. 
These will be examined in three different Chapters, 
and the particular facts under each attained, expounded, 
and assigned to their places in their proper order. So 
far as it may conduce to a more clear and full apprehen- 
sion of the more important elements in some of these 
divisions, they will be investigated more formally under 
separate sections. 



CHAPTER L 



THE SENSE. 

The primitive fact of Sensation has already been found, 
as a content in the vital organ, which an intellectual pro- 
cess is to bring to a complete perception. It has been 
common to apply the term Sense only to the capacity for 
taking this content in the sensation, leaving the intellec- 
tual process for a matured perception to come in under 
some other appellation. In this view, sense is no faculty 
for knowing, but only a receptivity for such content as 
may, subsequently, be brought into knowledge. But the 
whole intellectual process for producing the sensation 
given, into an object in perception, is so utterly distinct 
from all other forms of knowing, that it must needs have 
its separate consideration, and be assigned to its appropri- 
ate position, and must therefore have its distinctive name. 
And while the term sense may properly apply to the 
receptivity, yet by no means is the work of the sense com- 
pleted in merely receiving the content, and only so when 
it has been completely envisaged in a distinct and defi- 
nite phenomenon. We thus leave that part of the sense 
which is only capacity for receiving, to what has already 
been said in connection with the primitive fact of sensa- 
tion ; and here consider only the part, which pertains to 
the intellectual process of bringing out the sensation to a 
clear perception, and the peculiarities of the object so 

10* 



114 THE INTELLECT. 

attained. The sense, thus, may embrace both sensation 
and perception — the receiving of the content and the 
completed representation of it — but while neither part 
should be held to exclude the other, the latter only can 
come within the consideration of the intellectual process 
as a knowing act. 

The Sense, therefore, as in the division of the intellect, 
includes only the process of knowing, and the peculiari- 
ties of that which is so known ; and is, thus, the faculty 
for attaining cognitions through sensation. This faculty 
for knowing in sense may be best studied by observing 
the distinction into External Sense and Internal Sense. 

Section I. The External Sense. This applies to 
the faculty for perceiving through the media of bodily 
organs. These organs are the eye, ear, skin, nose and 
tongue, and which receive their content in sensation for 
objects in vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. A 
sixth sense is sometimes made, by separating in touch 
the sensibility of the skin, and the resistence of muscular 
pressure. From the first is given the content which is 
perceived as heat and cold, titulation and Irritation ; 
from the last is attained the sensation which is perceived 
as hardness, roughness, weight, etc. Sufficient atten- 
tion has already been given to sensation. In it we have 
a content that is, as yet, wholly undiscriminated and 
undefined. It is in the living organ only, and not yet 
in the consciousness as any known object. In order 
that it may be so known, an intellectual operation is 



THE SENSE. 115 

necessary, by winch this content in blind feeling shall be 
completely set in clear consciousness. 

Two things are to be effected. The intellectual 
agency must first determine what the content is, as dis- 
tinguished from all others that have or may be given ; 
and secondly, this agency must determine its limits, in 
all the ways in which limitation can be referred to it, 
and in this how much the content is ; the first operation 
may be known as Observation, and the second as Atten- 
tion. We will give each of these more particularly. 

# Observation. — Sensation merely gives a content in the 
organ for a perception, but it does nothing towards 
making that content to appear in consciousness, as a 
distinct object. It is occasion for the self-active mind 
to pass intaan intellectual state, and by a purely intel- 
lectual process to distinguish the particular sensation. 
This purely distinguishing act is what is meant by obser- 
vation. It avails to give the content in sensation as a 
distinct object. 

As thus brought into distinct appearance, it becomes 
properly a 'phenomenon, and what was before undistin- 
guished content in sensation, now becomes a quality, 
discriminated from all others and known in its own pecu- 
liarity. The distinguishing of the sensation, as belonging 
to its appropriate organ, gives the quality as distinct in 
kind; viz. color, as sensation in the eye, distinct from 
sound, as sensation in the ear, or smell, as sensation in 
the nose, etc. The distinguishing of the content in the 
same organ, from all others that may be given in it, 
determines the quality in its distinct variety ; viz. a red 



116 THE INTELLECT. 

color, as discriminated from any other, or the peculiar 
noise, or odor, as distinct from all other sounds or smells. 
The content is thus separated in its kind from all others, 
and also in its variety from all others, and made to stand 
out in consciousness in its own individuality, as having 
nothing farther to be separated from it, or discriminated 
in it, but which now appears in its own peculiar identity. 

It is to be carefully noted that observation is exclu- 
sively a distinguishing act, and does nothing beyond a 
complete discrimination of the quality both in its kind 
and variety. When I have intellectually distinguished 
the sensation as a content in vision, and thus the quality 
of color in kind; and then have farther distinguished 
the particular color in the vision, and thus have found 
the peculiar variety, I have fulfilled the whole work of 
observation. The distinguishing may go on through all 
differences in variety, till the quality has nothing farther 
that can be discriminated as dividing it from others, and 
thus be completely and exactly individualized ; and in 
this is exhausted the entire function of observation. It 
results in making the content to be a distinct object in 
the consciousness. 

Attention, — When a sensation has been distinguished 
in kind and variety, by an observing act, there is given 
in this, a distinct, but not yet a definite object to the 
consciousness. We need, farther, a purely intellectual 
agency which shall completely define the quality within 
its own limits. When we have distinct quality, we need 
also to go farther to complete the perception, and attain 
the definite quantify. This is effected in attention. As 



THE SENSE. 117 

observation was exclusively a distinguishing act, so atten- 
tion is wholly a constructing act. Not a holding to, 
(ad teneo) but a stretching to (ad tendo) the limits of 
the object. 

An attending agency, as a complete fact in the con- 
sciousness, may be best suggested to the apprehension 
in the following manner. If I would possess any pure 
diagram, in simple mental space, I must in my own intel- 
lectual agency construct it; it will not somehow come 
into the mind of itself. I can have no pure mathema- 
tical line, except as in my intellectual agency I assume 
some point and produce, it through directly contiguous 
points, conjoining all into one form, and thus I draw the 
line. Thus of all pure figures, simple or complicated, 
circles, squares, triangles, and all sections of them, I can 
not subjectively possess them, except as I intellectually 
construct them. If now, you will carefully note in con- 
sciousness this constructing agency, which describes pure 
mathematical figure, you will in it attain the precise fact 
of an act of attention. 

The distinct quality appears in consciousness from the 
act of observation, but as given in space it is as yet 
utterly formless. An intellectual agency must construct 
it, by describing its entire outline and apprehending its 
complete limits, and thus bringing its definite shape into 
the consciousness. Whether it be quality in vision or in 
touch, the attending agency must stretch itself all about 
it, or brood entirely over it, and thus take it in its exact 
limits and determine what space it fills. The quality, 



118 THE INTELLECT. 

given in observation, is thus determined as to its quantity 
in space by attention. 

So the distinct quality, as given in time, is by obser- 
vation alone wholly without period. An intellectual 
agency must again construct it. Taking the distinct 
quality at the instant of its appearance, and conjoining 
the successive instants into one period up to the time of 
its disappearance, and thus stretching over the whole 
from beginning to concluding limit, the quantity of time 
that it has occupied is determined, and we have the 
quality now in its definite duration. 

So, moreover, the distinct quality, as given in degree, 
is wholly measureless by the act of observation alone. 
An intellectual agency must begin at the point of an 
arising affection in the sense, and follow up, through all 
degrees of intensity in the sensation, to the point actually 
reached by the content in the organ, and thus by stretch- 
ing over all degrees from zero to the given limit of affec- 
tion, the full measure of the content in sensation is deter- 
mined, and we have the quality in its definite amount. 

No quality can have measure in any other directions 
than extension in space, duration in time, and intensity 
of degree ; and when an act of attention has stretched 
over the limits filled by the distinct quality in all these 
several directions, it has determined it in all the forms 
which any quality can possess, and made it to be known 
definitely in all its measures of quantity. 

The above operations of observing and attending are 
conditional for all knowledge in the sense. Without the 
first, the quality would not be distinct, without the last it 



THE SEffSE, 119 

would not be definite in form. I may know distinctly a 
distant color on a sign board to be black, and yet I may 
not be able to define the color and read the letters. I 
shall in such case have a distinct but not a definite know- 
ledge. I may distinctly observe a white object at the 
bottom of a stream or a lake, and yet from the ripples 
on its surface may not by any power of attention be able 
accurately to define and exactly know its shape. So, 
again, there may be sensation with neither observation 
nor attention, and in this condition the sensation remains 
in unconsciousness. So, I am often unconscious of the 
book from which I am reading, of the chair on which I 
am sitting, and of the pavement over which I walk. The 
knowledge is as complete, as the distinguishing and defin- 
ing are perfect. One operation cannot dispense with, 
nor compensate for, the other, but both must be fully 
accomplished. 

All qualities may be distinguished ; and all may be 
defined in the limits of time and degree ; but only the 
qualities given in the vision and the touch can be fully 
defined in space. The content in the eye and the pres- 
sure of the fingers, can be constructed into complete 
shape in space, and these only. Sounds and smells can 
not be defined in shape, and only imperfectly in direction 
and distance, by the most careful attention ; and tastes 
can be defined by no limits of extension in space. Such 
are the facts as given in experience, but it appertains to 
Rational Psychology to determine the principles why our 
experience must so be. The fact of sensation is given as 
primitive ; the intellectual operations, distinguishing in 



120 THE INTELLECT. 

observation and defining in attention, bring the content 
in sensation distinctly and definitely into consciousness. 
A complete object is thus before the mind, and we are 
said to apprehend it, in thus getting it within the mind's 
grasp j out of its former darkness. In its appearance in 
the light of consciousness, it is known as phenomenon ; 
and inasmuch as it has been taken through the medium 
of sensible organs, it is termed a perception. As the 
impression on the organ has been made by an existence 
from without, the phenomenon is ascribed to outer nature 
as some quality of an external world, and perceived 
through an external sense. Thus may all the facts of 
external perception be gathered, as inclusive of all the 
phenomena of human experience by sensible organs. 

The affection of the organ is from some external 
impulse, and no product of the mind, but inasmuch as the 
living mind is diffused through the entire organism, this 
affection becomes the occasion for an intellectual agency 
to distinguish and define it in the clear light of conscious- 
ness, and thus to know it as phenomenon. In this is 
readily determined what is objective and what subjective. 
Thus : I perceive heat. Is this heat in my mind, or in 
the object? That which has affected the organ, and 
become a content in sensation, is from the outer world, 
and that which has distinguished and defined it, is from 
an inner agency. The affection has been given, the 
peculiarity and the form have been found. That which 
has come in from without is to the mind wholly indistinct 
and indefinite, until in its own agency it has determined 
what, where, when, and how much it is. 



THE SENSE. 121 

It thus follows, that what has been given to the sense 
is not the thing itself. That outer thing has in some way 
affected the organ and induced sensation, and this sensa- 
tion it is which the intellect distinguishes and defines. 
Not the thing itself is made object, but the color, sound, 
smell, etc., of the thing, appears in consciousness. The 
outer thing has so affected me, that I have come to know 
it in such a mode of its being, and apprehend, not it, but 
its qualities. The qualities are real, and not mere seem- 
ing phantasies, inasmuch as there has been a real impres- 
sion and thus a real content in sensation ; but they are 
only real qualities of things, and not the things them- 
selves. I perceive a redness, a fragrance, a silky smooth- 
ness, through different kinds of sensation ; but I do not 
by any sense perceive the rose, which is red, fragrant, 
smooth, etc. Moreover, these qualities, as gained by 
sense, are single and separate in the consciousness. 
They are constructed one by one, and perceived only as 
so many different phenomena, and cannot by any obser- 
vation or attention be put together as the attributes of 
one substance. They are known in isolation, and not in 
their connection. And still farther, to the sense all 
things are in a perpetual flow. The phenomena are to 
it, only as they are in the consciousness ; and in this, 
there is a continual arising and departing. One pheno- 
menon is rapidly succeeded by another, and with contin- 
ually varied sensations continually varied phenomena are 
perceived. And not merely do the phenomena pass 
rapidly on and off from the field of consciousness, but the 
same phenomenon to the sense is in continual succession* 

11 



122 THE INTELLECT. 

The rays of light which give the phenomenon of color 9 
and the undulations of air which occasion sound, are for 
no moment the same. The impressions on the organ are 
a series and not a constant, and thus the content in sen- 
sation is in no two instants unchanged. Like the river, 
its stream is perpetual, yet never the same. In the 
sense, all objects are coming and going, and the object 
itself is also never in one stay. Thus, the outer world 
comes into the consciousness only as to its properties, 
and we perceive the qualities of things only ; and those, 
single, separate, and fleeting. Had we only the faculty 
of sense, in observation and attention, our experience 
could have no orderly connections, but would be only a 
medley of coming and vanishing appearances. 

Section II. The Internal Sense. — The internal 
sense is a faculty for knowing the inner mental exercises. 
When considering the fact of sensation, we found the liv- 
ing mind itself an organ for receiving impressions from 
its own action, and thus taking a content in sensation 
with every affection which its own movement induced. 
The action in its different capacities of knowing, feeling, 
and willing gives the different hinds of content for 
thought, emotion, and volition; and, in each capacity, 
the varieties of content for peculiar thoughts, emotions, 
and volitions. The distinguishing and defining intellec- 
tual agency constructs these into complete phenomena as 
readily as the organic sensations. Inner exercises are 
hereby perceived as distinctly and definitely as outer 
qualities, and an emotion of joy or an act of choice is as 



THE SEXSE. 123 

clearly in consciousness, and as truly phenomenon, as a 
red color or a fragrant smell. 

The difference in the forms, which can be given to inner 
and outer phenomena, is alone here remarkable. The 
affection induced in the mind by its own action does not 
have local position and topical expansion, as does the con- 
tent of sensation in the eye, or the moving organ of touch, 
and thus no occasion is given for the intellectual agency 
in attention to stretch itself over any spacial limits, and 
determine any locality and shape to an inner phenomenon. 
Only duration of period, and amount of intensity, can be 
determined for any inner exercise, and thus no forms of 
space can have any relevancy to mental exercises. The 
conditions of space are wholly impertinent to all mental 
being and action. The members of the body, and the 
body itself, can give affection to its own organs, and thus 
its qualities can be constructed in space and known as 
having extension; and the mind may be conceived as 
somehow diffused through the body, and thus having 
locality ; but this is thought only and not perceived, and 
thought even through the medium of a supposed con- 
tainer, without being able to think where in the body the 
mind is. The mind appears only in its acts, and to these 
no place, but only period can be given. A thought has a 
when, but not a where ; a limit in time, but not a shape 
in space. 

As in the outer, so also in the inner sense, the pheno- 
mena are given single and separate. The thought, the 
emotion and the volition are constructed in the conscious- 
ness one by one, and we thus perceive the exercises iso- 



124 THE INTELLECT. 

late one from the other. The act, and not the actor, 
appears ; and no operation of construction, in attention, 
can connect the separate acts as together dependent 
upon one mind. Were there only the faculty of sense, 
we should know the mental phenomena only as successive 
appearances dancing in and out of the consciousness. 
These single exercises are also in continual flow. The 
acts not only pass away, to be followed by others, but the 
same exercise is a continually recurring energy, and no 
thought or emotion can stay hi the consciousness for any 
two moments the same. The affection in the sensation 
is only a perpetual repetition. 

In the sense, we thus know how the outer and the 
inner affects us. The sensations induced become, in con- 
sciousness, the qualities of an outer and the exercises of 
an inner world. They appear, and we know them as 
appearances, and apprehend them as the modes of a real 
existence ; but we only perceive that which is attributed 
to tilings, and not by any means the tilings themselves. 

All perception is an immediate beholding, inasmuch as 
the object is put face to face before the mind in the light 
of consciousness. Perception is thus intuition, in the sense 
of immediate view in consciousness. There is another 
meaning of intuition, which is a looking into things them- 
selves, and is more properly insight, but which is for the 
reason and not the sense, and is distinguished as rational 
intuition. A sense intuition is an immediate beholding in 
consciousness. This is empirical intuition when the con- 
tent in sensation is distinguished and defined, and thus a 
real phenomenon is given. It is the same, whether of outer 



THE SENSE. 125 

®y inner phenomenon : a perceived thought or emotion is 
a real phenomenon, immediately beheld in consciousness, 
as much as a perceived red color or a fragrant odor. It 
is a pure intuition, when the object in consciousness is 
wholly the production of the intellect, without any con- 
tent in sensation. An intellectual operation, which shall 
be the same as an attending act, except as there is no 
content in sense to condition it, may construct any mathe- 
matical figures, or arithmetical numbers, and such pure 
forms in the consciousness are what is meant by pure 
intuition. All pure mathematic is thus a science of pure 
intuition, inasmuch as all its modified diagrams and com- 
plicated numbers are purely intellectual creations, with 
no content in sensation. The scheme, after which such 
pure diagrams must be made, is furnished by the reason, 
and thus no animal can be mathematician, but the con- 
struction itself is altogether a work in pure sense. 

Section III. Fancy. — -When the constructing 
agency, with no content in sensation, builds up for itself 
seeming mental pictures as the semblances of real phe- 
nomena, it is termed Fancy. The objects are mere 
phantasies as a seeming, and not veritable phenomena 
as an appearing; and, though the work of an image- 
making faculty, they are not properly termed products 
of the imagination. Imagination proper is the work 
of the pure understanding, as will be hereafter explained, 
but the fancy belongs wholly to the pure sense. Its 
semblances are grouped together from a capricious 
interest in the mere seeming, and not from any judg- 

11* 



126 THE INTELLECT. 

ment or taste, and are thus -wholly fantastic, with neither 
the principle of utility nor beauty. This faculty of 
the pure sense is lively in all the first wakings of 
the mind, and the earlier dawnings of self-conscious- 
ness. In a disturbed sleep, the fancy is ever busy, and 
the semblances come and depart in grotesque combina- 
tions and successions, or in more regulated order from 
previous habits of association, accordingly as the mind is 
more or less lost to all self-consciousness. There is also 
much day-dreaming, or castle-building in the air, which 
is but the empty reverie of an idle fancy. The half-stu- 
por of an opiate obscures the self-discrimination and sets 
loose the fancy ; and the horrible hauntings of delirium 
tremens , or mania a! potu, are the demons of fancy which 
torture the burning brain of the habitual inebriate. Chil- 
dren live in their fancies, and the savage mind is always 
fantastic. Their ornaments, amusements, music, and 
pictures, are destitute of all living art, and are only a 
gaudy display of that which is most ostentatious or strik- 
ing to the senses. It is only after much cultivation, that 
the mind rises from the sense-play of the fancy, to the 
works of imagination and the creations of genius; and 
only the most cultivated can appreciate the highest 
products. 



CHAPTER II 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 

The Understanding is that Intellectual Faculty by which 
the single and fleeting phenomena of sense are known as 
qualities inhering in permanent things, and all things as 
cohering to form the universe. In the sense, the opera- 
tion of the intellectual agency is engaged in putting the 
content in sensation, within limits ; in the understanding, 
this agency is employed in putting that which has been 
defined, into its grounds and sources. The first is a 
conjoining and the last a connecting operation. The 
sense-object is a mere aggregation ; the understanding- 
object is an inherent coalition. In the sense, the object 
appears ; in the understanding, it is thought. One is a 
perception ; the other is a judgment. 

We may best apprehend the peculiar work of the 
understanding, by looking through the whole connecting 
process. When distinct and definite phenomena are 
perceived in sense, they are not allowed to remain single 
and separate in the mind, just as the sense has taken 
them. A farther operation succeeds, and a ground is 
thought in which they inhere, and the single phenomena 
become thus known as the connected qualities of a com- 
mon substance. The redness, the fragrance, the smooth- 
ness, etc., which have been separately attained by differ- 
ent senses, are successively thought into one thing, and 



128 THE INTELLECT. 

the mind forms the several judgments that the rose is 
red, and is fragrant, and is smooth, etc. And so, also, 
with the distinct and definite inner phenomena. The 
thought, emotion, volition, etc., are successively connected 
in their common source as the exercises of one and the 
same agent; and thus the successive judgments are 
formed that the mind thinks, and feels, and wills. A 
common subject is thought for the qualities, and a com- 
mon source for the changes, and they become thus con- 
nected as substance and qualities, cause and events. 
And still farther, the different substances are also thought 
as standing in communion together, and reciprocally 
influencing each other; and causes and events are 
thought as produced the one from the other, and thus in 
dependence ; and in this way, the cohering things and 
the adhering changes are all connected together in one 
nature, and judged so to inhere with each other through 
space and time, that they all together make the universe. 
The permanent substance, in which the qualities are 
thought to inhere, is no perception of the sense, and can 
be gained by no analysis or generalization of that which 
sense has perceived, but is itself wholly a new conception 
in the understanding. As distinct from phenomenon, it 
may be termed notion. The former is perceived in the 
sense, the latter is thought in the understanding. The 
notion is made to stand under the phenomena and con- 
nect them into itself, and the intellectual faculty which 
performs this connecting operation, is properly known as 
the understanding. 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 129 

The genesis of the understanding-conception, as notion, 
may be apprehended as follows : Some external thing is 
supposed to have occasioned the impression made upon 
the organ, which induced a sensation; and then this 
sensation, and not the thing that made the impression, is 
taken up by an intellectual operation which distinguishes 
and defines it, and thereby makes it to appear complete 
in consciousness ; and thus the phenomenon is solely the 
mode, in which the external thing has revealed itself in 
the sense. This external thing, thus making itself to be 
known in the sense only by its phenomenal qualities, is 
thought to be the ground of these qualities. Inasmuch 
as it cannot appear, it can be no phenomenon; but inas- 
much as it is necessarily thought as the ground of the 
phenomenon, it is notion, and stands under the pheno- 
menon. We thus call it substance (sub stains). 

This substance, in the thought, is that which has sepa- 
rately given to the different organs their particular phe- 
nomena ; and these are connected, in the judgment, as 
the several qualities all inhering in the substance. The 
substance cannot appear, and therefore the connecting 
operation cannot be in the light of consciousness, as was 
the constructing act of attention in the sense. The know- 
ing of the understanding cannot therefore be intuitive. 
Each separate phenomenon is severally brought to the 
common substance and connected with all the others in 
it, and by this discursus of the thought through the com- 
mon substance, the knowing of the qualities as inhering 
in it is discursive. The connection of quality and sub- 
stance is not perceived, but is thought. 



130 THE INTELLECT. 

Again, when the qualities of the same substance alter 
in the sense — as when water congeals, or becomes vapor 
— it is thought, and not perceived, that another substance 
has been brought in combination with it, and so changed 
it as to modify its phenomena ; and these new phenomena 
are thus known as events, which have come into the con- 
sciousness through the sense by this modifying cause. 
The substances do not at all appear, and therefore their 
modifying action cannot be perceived; but the under- 
standing thinks this action to be the cause of the altera- 
tions of the phenomena, and brings these altered pheno- 
mena, as events, discursively to the cause and connects 
them in it, and thus judges them to be successive events 
depending upon their causes. The whole process is a 
thinking in judgments discursively, and not a perceiving 
of objects intuitively. 

Lastly, when the qualities of different substances are 
altered reciprocally one with another — as when one body 
is put in motion and another body is retarded, by their 
contact ■■ — it is thought in the understanding that there 
has been an efficiency in each body, which has thus altered 
the phenomenon in each — on one side from rest to 
motion, and on the other from a given degree of motion 
to a slower. The substances are not themselves per- 
ceived, and therefore the action and reaction cannot be 
perceived ; but the understanding discursively connects 
the begun motion and the retarded motion, in the reci- 
procal efficiency from the contact, and thinks the two 
events as co-etaneously occurring, and thereby judges 
these phenomena to cohere in the reciprocal causation. 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 131 

In the use of these notions of substance, cause, and 
reciprocal efficiency, all separate qualities, and all events 
in sequence or communion, which are perceived by sense, 
are discursively connected into permanent things, and suc- 
cessive events, and cotemporaneous occurrences, accord- 
ing to their respective notional bonds, and are all thus 
bound together in a judgment -which makes them to be 
one Nature of things (a! nascor) ; a growing together ; 
a concretion; and in this an indissoluble and uni- 
versal whole. What the same intellect has intuitively 
defined in the sense, it here discursively connects in the 
understanding, and thereby comes to know, in a judg- 
ment, the fleeting appearances as the altering qualities 
of permanent things, and these permanent things as con- 
stituting one universal nature. The knowing of the 
phenomena was a perceiving ; and the knowing of the 
things, and their coalescing in one whole of nature, is a 
judging; and the difference of these two intellectual 
operations demands that they be referred to the distinct 
functions of two different faculties. It is the proper work 
of the understanding to connect the phenomena of the 
sense into one nature, as a universe. 

It is, moreover, competent to the understanding to 
think in judgments, without any phenomena being given 
through the sense. The pure understanding can take its 
own empty forms, and use them as readily and as logi- 
cally in all modes of connecting in judgments, as it can 
the actual phenomena which are given in the conscious- 
ness. This operation is in pure thought, and as thus 
excluding all content of sense is mere abstract thinking ; 



132 THE INTELLECT. 

but its connected judgments from pure forms may be 
indefinitely comprehensive, and are as valid in their con- 
clusions as when it is connecting appearing qualities into 
real things, and real things in a whole of nature. That the 
elements for abstract thinking may be given, there must 
be found several particular faculties for attaining and 
using them, and these faculties belong to the province of 
the understanding, and as mental facts for a system of 
psychology need to be attained at this very point of our 
progress. They will be given in separate sections, and 
the consideration of them particularly will, in the result, 
give a conclusive view of the whole logical process of 
abstract thinking. The examination of neither of them 
will need to be very extended. 

Section I. Memory. — This is one of the most pro- 
minent, and in many respects one of the most important 
faculties connected with knowing. It follows perception, 
but is preliminary and auxiliary to all processes of thinking 
in judgments. When phenomena have been apprehended 
in clear consciousness, they do not altogether pass from 
the mind in vanishing from the light of consciousness, but 
leave what may be termed their semblance, or representa- 
tive, behind them. The faculty of retaining these repre- 
sentatives of 'former perceptions is Memory ; and the act 
of recalling them into consciousness is Recollection. The 
Memory differs from the Fancy in this — that the former 
retains only the representatives of perceptions ; the latter 
constructs new forms, and modifies old recollections into 
new combinations . The Memory is thefacu Uyfor retain- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 133 

ing representatives of whatever has once been in the con- 
sciousness. Not the phenomenon perceived is retained, 
so that the recollection is but a repeated perception ; but 
only the representative of the phenomenon is the object 
in memory. When I perceive the house, the horse, etc., 
a real content in sensation is given ; but when I recall 
these up in memory, the sensation does not return, and 
only the resemblance of the once perceived house, or 
horse, comes into the consciousness. 

All objects of consciousness are not recollected, inas- 
much as the sufficient occasion for recalling their resem- 
blance does not occur. But it may well be believed that 
every fact in consciousness has left its modification upon 
the mind, so that it cannot again be as if that fact had 
not occurred ; and that an occasion of sufficient excite- 
ment might be given, by which its recollection would be 
secured. Remarkable instances sometimes occur, where, 
from some preternatural excitement, almost the whole 
transactions of a long life are vividly again spread out in 
the consciousness. Those facts that have been the most 
clear, and especially those that have been connected with 
the deepest feeling, and more especially those also that 
have called out the will and become matters of practical 
interest, will be the most readily recollected. An act 
of will may favor the act of recollection, by affording the 
most favorable occasions for it, but in all cases the recol- 
lecting act is itself spontaneous, and not a volition. 
Oftentimes the man is conscious, that no effort of will 
can secure the sufficient occasion for a specific recollec- 
tion. Those facts, also, which at the time of occurrence 

12 



134 THE INTELLECT. 

were more carefully noted, and such as have been orderly 
arranged in reference to their being retained, will be 
recalled with the greater facility. But artificial methods 
for helping the memory, by arbitrary associations and 
combinations, are of very questionable general utility. 

Mere memory is not knowledge ; it is not perception, 
nor thinking in judgments. It is the retention of so much 
of former things known, that they may again be called 
up and made materials for thought ; and, through the 
proper processes of the intellect, elaborated into science. 
Without memory, the mind could neither attain its ele- 
ments for logical or philosophical thinking, nor pass from 
particular conclusions to such as are more general. The 
thoughts, and the order of the thinking, would both be 
wanting. While mere memory is of little worth, how- 
ever retentive, yet the strongest minds often falter, and 
even utterly fail, from the deficiencies of memory. 

Section II. Conception. — When, in fancy, I have 
constructed any mental object, or group of objects, I have 
that in consciousness which may be called a phantasm. 
When, in attention, I construct a real sensation into a 
definite object, I have in consciousness a phenomenon. 
When I recall either of these in recollection, I have a 
remembrance of them hi a representative. This repre- 
sentative from memory has been sometimes termed a 
conception, and which is nothing but a remembered per- 
ception ; but a faculty for attaining conceptions is quite 
other than the faculty of memory. 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 135 

When I have a remembered representative of an object 
formerly perceived, say of a house, it is the resemblance of 
that particular house. But I must soon have the resem- 
blances of many particular houses, and of these the mind 
spontaneously makes a general scheme, which is not a 
resemblance of any particular house, but which includes 
that which is common to all houses. The general scheme 
embraces all of its class, while it is a resemblance in all 
respects to no one particular in the class. Thus, I per- 
ceive, or remember, a particular house ; but I think that 
which is a general scheme for all houses. It is wholly 
an intellectual act, and belongs to the understanding, 
and needs only the occasion of some particulars in the 
memory, and its generalizing them will generate in one 
scheme all that can be like them. Such a generalized 
representative is properly termed a conception. A Con- 
ception is that general representation which has in it all 
of its own class. Thus, my conception of a triangle has 
within it all three-sided figures, and my conception of a 
quadruped has within it all four-footed animals. It can 
not be made to fit any particular ; it teems with all parti- 
culars. Conceptions may be more or less generic, but 
must contain more than a merely remembered perception. 

There is in this the whole matter of dispute between 
the Nominalist and the Realist of the old schoolmen ; 
and in this also the occasion for its complete solution. 
The nominalist was right as against the realist, for in the 
generic name (quadruped) there is supposed no real 
animal; but the realist was also right as against the 
nominalist, for there is more in the generic than a mere 



136 THE INTELLECT. 

name, even the scheme for all of that family. The 
proper word for all such generic representation, is that 
of conception, and gives the truth on both sides ; exclud- 
ing the real particular, and including the scheme for all 
particulars. 

Sometimes the word conception is applied to generali- 
zations, other than such as have their particulars in the 
phenomena of sense. We may think substances and 
causes, but cannot perceive them in consciousness ; they 
come within the understanding, but not in the sense. 
They may, however, be generalized, and are thus concep- 
tions ; but they need their discriminating mark. They 
are thought-conceptions, or understanding-conceptions: 
while the former are phenomenal or sense-conceptions. 
We may also have conceptions of the ideal in the reason, 
as well as of the notional in the understanding, and snch 
are discriminated as reasonrconceptions. Not the sub- 
stance but the thought of the substance, and not the 
absolute but the idea of the absolute, come within the 
consciousness; and as thus remembered thoughts and 
ideas, they may be generalized into conceptions. 

Any conceptions, thus formed in a generalizing act of 
the understanding, are the materials for forming new 
judgments, and may be used by various methods of con- 
necting in thinking, to carry the mind onwards in science 
to the most comprehensive conclusions. 

Section III. Association. — The representatives 
of former objects of consciousness, when they have fallen, 
as it were, into the memory, do not lie in this common 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 137 

mental receptacle separately. They are as clusters on 
the vine, attached one to another by some law of connec- 
tion peculiar to the case, and which has its general deter- 
mination for all minds, and its particular modifications in 
some mhids. When one is called up in recollection, it 
does not therefore come up singly, but brings the whole 
cluster along with it. This action of the mind, to attach 
its representatives in the memory one to another, is called 
association, and may include a number of different modes 
in which such attachments are formed. In many cases, 
the phenomena were together in consciousness, attached 
both in place and time, and their representatives have 
thus gone into the memory, already associated. In other 
cases, there is that in the one, which fits it as an occasion 
for the mind spontaneously to call up the other, though 
they may have had no previous relation in the conscious- 
ness. The likeness of one thing to another, or even the 
contrast of one thing with another, in quality or form, 
may very readily induce the calling up of one in the 
presence of the other. This is sometimes termed sugges- 
tion, but which only differs in the method and not in the 
Mnd of attachment. In other cases, again, the mind can 
voluntarily make itself to put its conceptions together, 
and associate its remembered perceptions and thoughts 
at its own pleasure, and thus secure an arbitrary attach- 
ment, where neither from the original reception, nor from 
any inherent occasion, was there any relation between 
them. Association differs from philosophical and logical 
thinking in judgments, inasmuch as in all regular think- 
ing the conceptions become subject and predicate, and 

12* 



138 THE INTELLECT. 

have their necessary copula as a discursive conclusion ; 
but in association, no formal judgments are made, and 
no conceptions predicated one of the other, but one simply 
brings the other up into consciousness with itself. If we 
call these remembered perceptions, whether generalized 
into conceptions or not, by the common name of thought ; 
Association will then be defined, the operation of bring- 
ing up one thought into consciousness by occasion of 
another. 

This operation of association goes on spontaneously 
and perpetually. One thought introduces its fellow, and 
passes off from the field of consciousness, and this again 
introduces its successor, and thus a constant march is 
going on across this field, through all our waking and 
dreaming hours. Some minds associate by slighter, or 
more distant relations than others ; and some thoughts 
introduce their successors much more rapidly than 
others ; and thus the trains of spontaneous thought will 
be greatly modified in different men, even under very 
similar circumstances. From such different trains of 
thought, general habits and manners must differ among 
men, and the particular air, address, and characteristic 
demeanor, must be very much determined from the pecu- 
liarity of the mental associations. Specially must this 
modify the conversation, for the man's words must be an 
expression of his thoughts. Attachments, formed through 
slight, unusual and unexpected relations of thought, may 
make one man's conversation lively, striking, original ; 
or, in its peculiar way, another man's, humorous, witty, 
figurative. The will may have much to do in regulating 



# 

THE UNDERSTANDING. 139 

and controlling the association of thought, and an earnest 
and protracted effort may cultivate and discipline this 
faculty in various directions. A man may make himself 
a rhymer, a punster, a dealer in charades and anagrams, 
by certain habits of associating thoughts with words ; or 
observing, inventive, practically effective, by certain asso- 
ciations of thoughts with things. An orderly and metho- 
dical train of thought may also be cultivated, by keeping 
the operation of this faculty under the regulations of time, 
place, and circumstances, so that the thought may be 
appropriate to the occasion. 

The power of recollection is very much dependent 
upon the laws of association. The fact we want may lie 
quite submerged and lost in the memory, but if we can 
lay hold of some associated thought and bring that up 
into consciousness, the lost thought is thus found, attached 
to and brought up with its fellow. Our processes of 
generalizing must also use the faculty of association, as 
a direct auxiliary. We associate objects by their per- 
ceived relations, and thus readily generalize the individ- 
uals into the class, order, species, and genus, to which 
they belong in the conception. And all communication 
of thought, from man to man, must very carefully regard 
the principle of association. All illustration of meaning 
is by the introduction of such comparisons, analogies and 
figures of rhetoric, as the laws of association determine 
will bring up, and bring out, in the consciousness, the 
intended thought the most completely. 



140 THE INTELLECT* 

Section IV. Abstraction.— The mind has the 
faculty to take out one, or any given number, from the 
cluster of its conceptions, or trains of thought, and make 
these the direct objects of its attention, and withdraw its 
attention from all other passing thoughts. It can also 
take any one conception, and separate any one part of it 
from others, and give to that part only its attention. 
The same is true of a real content in sensation; the 
mind can fix its attention on any part of it, separate from 
all the rest, and thus make its perception of that part 
more distinct and definite. Of all figures, the mind may 
take the triangle ; from all kinds of triangles, the isoce- 
les ; and from this, any part of the same, as a side, an 
angle, the area, etc. From any general conception, it 
may also fix on a particular, and thus have both a dis- 
tinct and a definite individual thought in the conscious- 
ness. All this comes under the operation of abstraction. 
Abstraction is the taking of one from many, or a part 
from a whole, and fixing it particularly in the conscious* 
ness. It is in fact, the taking of a generalization to 
pieces, or the detaching from an association. 

Abstraction is the chief operation in all analysis. It 
separates the many into individuals, the compounded into 
simples, and the total into its parts. No mind can know 
clearly and accurately without exercising vigorously this 
power of abstraction. Thoughts must be considered 
singly ; things must be examined in detail ; the mind 
must be able to detach its attention from all others, and 
hold itself to the particular point, patiently and protract* 
edly, or its knowledge will ever be confused and obscure, 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 141 

Section V. Reflection. — When the mind turns 
hack upon its passing train of conceptions, and takes up 
any one for more deliberate examination, it is termed an 
act of reflection. The onward spontaneous flow of 
thought would continue uninterrupted, in the order deter- 
mined by the laws of association, did there not occur 
occasions for arresting the march and holding some one 
passing thought to a more particular and extended opera- 
tion of the mind upon it. It may be for analysis, for 
determining its philosophical or logical connections, or for 
using it to illustrate some other conception by comparison 
or contrast; but for whatever end it may be, such a 
return upon the track of passing thought is an exercise 
of the faculty of reflection. The occasion for it may be 
given in many things of which at the time we took no 
notice, and thus many a time the mind is found earnestly 
at work in reflective thought, when the occasion for it 
cannot be recalled. At other times it is occasioned by 
a deliberate purpose, and the man determinedly puts his 
mind back upon some portion of his former experience, 
and is thus said to intently reflect upon it. 

The habit of reflection is always with difficulty attained. 
All things conspire to induce the onward flow of associ- 
ated thought, and any occasion which interrupts the cur- 
rent is felt as an obstacle intruding itself into the placid 
stream, and violently disturbing its wonted serenity. 
Severe mental discipline is always demanded for the 
attainment of the power of patient and protracted reflec- 
tion, and yet such a control of the train of thought is a 
necessary condition to all clear and accurate knowledge. 



142 THE INTELLECT. 

Not a single conception the mind may have, can be said 
to be accurately and adequately known, except as it has 
been made the subject of steady and repeated reflection. 
A rapid journey through a country affords opportunity 
for only hasty glances ; it is only by a return and more 
careful observation, that we know its objects accurately, 
and retain the knowledge permanently. 

Section VI. Judgment. — Conceptions stand singly 
in the mind, or attached to each other only by the laws 
of association, except as they are made subject to reflec- 
tion. But in reflection, we not only attain the concep- 
tion more completely ; the mind also determines its vari- 
ous peculiarities. There is the general conception, and 
also the several characteristics which qualify it. The 
original conception is called the subject, and that which 
qualifies it, the predicate, and that which connects the 
two, after its particular form, the copula; and thus we 
say, the house is white ; is of brick ; is two stories high, 
etc. The conception is a thought in the understanding, 
and the quality is discursively predicated of it, and the 
intellectual process of forming such connections is a 
thinking in judgments. A Judgment is a determined 
connection of two conceptions as subject and predicate. 
More than two conceptions may be so thought in connec- 
tion, and it will form a compound judgment. Affirma- 
tions in the sense differ wholly from judgments in the 
understanding. We sometimes speak of mathematical 
thinking, and of mathematical judgments, but whatever 
the sameness of the phraseology, we must carefully distin- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 143 

guish the difference of the thing. The conceptions in the 
sense are always definite constructions in consciousness, 
and we immediately behold the relation. When I say 
the color is a square figure ; the sound is at a distance ; 
or the radii of the same circle are equal ; I can intui- 
tively apprehend, in an immediate construction, the rela- 
tion of these predicates to their subjects, and I do not at 
all think them. But my conception of house, as subject 
of the predicates above, cannot be constructed ; it must 
be notion, and not phenomenon ; thought, and not per- 
ceived : and thus the connection of its predicates can be 
discursive only, not intuitive. We have here to do with 
judgments in the understanding, not affirmations in the 
sense. 

Thinking in judgments is of two kinds, and of three 
varieties. The kinds differ in the manner of attaining 
the predicates ; the varieties differ in the forms of the 
copula. The hinds of judgment are : — 

1. Analytical judgments. — The manner of attaining 
the predicates is, here, by an analysis. The conception, 
as subject, is taken, and an analysis made of it into its 
several parts, and these are connected as predicates of 
the subject, and thus form the particular judgments 
respecting it. The general conception of body may be 
taken as an example, and from a mere mental analysis, 
I can find in the conception of body, extension, figure, 
impenetrability, divisibility, etc., and can say, all bodies 
are extended, have shape, are impenetrable, are divisible, 
etc., and thus predicate of body all its primary qualities. 
Or the conception may be of something that experience 



144 THE INTELLECT. 

has given to us with all its ascertained characteristics. 
Thus of the conception of man, as experience has revealed 
him, we can by an analysis say of all men, that they are 
intelligent ; rational ; responsible ; mortal, as to the body ; 
and immortal as to the soul, etc. The analysis may thus 
take out all that has been put into the conception, and 
predicate each analytical conception of the original sub- 
ject. All such judgments are analytical. 

An analytical judgment does not at all enlarge the field 
of knowledge, for all the predicates, ultimately made, 
were already given in the original conception. I have 
made my knowledge more distinct, more detailed, but 
not more extensive by my multiplied judgments. The 
method of analytical judgments is especially demanded 
for all conceptions that are obscure, perplexed, confused, 
or complicated. The analysis, carefully made, lays open 
the whole conception, and the consecutive judgments thus 
formed determine at length all the characteristics of the 
subject. 

2. Synthetical judgments. — When we attain some- 
new conception, and can predicate that of some other 
conception already possessed, we add so much to our 
knowledge of that conception, and the judgment is thus 
much extended beyond any former judgment of that sub- 
ject. All such are synthetical judgments. The new 
conception to be predicated of the former one may be 
attained in various ways, and the judgment formed will 
be as valid as has been made the possession of the new 
fact. Thus, to all that I may get from an analysis of 
body in its primary qualities, and to all that former 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 145 

experience has attained in the conception of some pecu- 
liar body, as gold, and which may be analytically predi- 
cated of it, I may enlarge my experiments and find what 
before had not been observed. To the yellowness, incor- 
ruptibility, malleability, etc., of gold, I may attain and 
add the surprising new fact that it is soluble in aqua 
regia, and I shall then predicate this new fact of all gold. 
Or from the patient induction of Newton, in attaining the 
new fact of the law of gravity, we may take another 
example of a synthetic judgment in henceforth affirming, 
that all matter gravitates towards all other matter, 
directly as its quantity, and inversely as the square of 
the distance. So also, in the conception of all pheno- 
mena of sense. I may some way attain the thought of 
a permanent substance, and can then predicate this new 
thought of the phenomenal, and say, all phenomena must 
have their permanent substance ; or farther, I may attain 
the conception of causality, and then say, all events must 
have their cause, etc. 

The validity of the experimental judgment is tested m 
the validity of the new fact discovered, but the validity 
of the notional judgment in the predicating of substance 
and cause for all phenomenal facts, cannot be tested by 
any experience. The substance and cause do not come 
up into consciousness in any experience, and can only be 
thought and not perceived. Such synthetical judgments 
are perpetually made, and we rest all our natural science 
upon their validity, but we cannot make these judgments 
to be science, except through Rational Psychology. All 
natural philosophy, and all inductive science, rest only on 

13 



146 THE INTELLECT, 

assumption, until, in Eational Psychology, we have laid 
the basis for demonstrating the validity of the law of sub- 
stance and cause. But all synthetical judgments add 
thus new predicates, and augment the knowledge as 
much, and as validly, as the newly attained conception 
reaches. Synthetical judgments are the only ones that 
can be employed in invention and discovery. All pro- 
gress in knowledge must be through their intervention. 

The varieties of judgments, and which depend upon 
the forms of copulation, are as follows :— 

1. Categorical judgments.— These directly affirm or 
deny the connection of subject and predicate. The 
former is an Affirmative categorical judgment, as- — the 
sun shines ; the rose is red, etc. The latter is a Nega- 
tive categorical judgment, as — the sun has not set ; the 
man is not dead, etc. 

2. Hypothetical judgments. —These present the copula 
under a condition or limitation, as— if the sun shine, it 
will be warm : so far as reason goes, responsibility fol- 
lows, etc. 

3. Disjunctive judgments.— -These subject the copula 
to one or more alternatives, as — either the fire, or the 
sun, warms me ; either the world is eternal, or it has 
originated in chance, or God made it. 

There are other modifications of judgments given in 
logical formulae, and which distinctions may all have 
their use for various purposes there occurring ; but the 
above is here sufficient, for the general fact of judgments 
in the understanding. The process of thinking in reflec- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 147 

tion is to determine these connections of conceptions, and 
to find how one may be predicated of the other. 

Section VII. Syllogistic Conclusion. — To any 
comprehensive judgment may be applied the principle, 
that what has been found true of the whole must also be 
true of all the parts. In this, an occasion is at once 
given for arranging conceptions in the order of the syllo- 
gism, and attaining to particular judgments. The first, 
or comprehensive judgment, is termed the major pre- 
miss ; the second, or induced judgment, is termed the 
minor premiss ; and the third, or deduced judgment, is 
termed the conclusion. As an example we have — 
Major premiss — Heat expands all metals. 
Minor premiss— Iron is a metal. 
Conclusion — Heat expands iron. 
The form of the major and minor premiss may be of 
either the Categorical, Hypothetical, or Disjunctive judg- 
ments, and the syllogism will vary accordingly. The 
one already given is in a categorical form, and a hypo- 
thetical is as follows :— 

If man is immortal ; and 
If a Hottentot be a man ; then 
The Hottentot is immortal. 
Or disjunctively — - 

Man is bound in fate, or he is free. 
Man is not bound in fate. 
Therefore man is free. 
All comprehensive judgments may thus take on the 
form of the syllogism, and though no augmentation of 



148 THE INTELLECT* 

knowledge can be attained by it, since the major premiss 
already contains all that can be distributed in the conclu- 
sion, yet may the validity of particular judgments be thus 
determined. The conclusion is made distinct from all 
that is comprehended in the major premiss, by reason of 
the interposition of the judgment in the middle term, or 
minor premiss. 

The content of the judgment may. be altogether 
abstracted, and the empty form of it maintained in names 
that signify nothing, and yet the conclusion is as validly 
determined in the syllogism, as when the conceptions had 
been themselves supplied — 

Thus — A is modified by X. 

But B, is contained in A. 
Therefore B, is modified by X. 

It is to be distinctly noticed that all syllogisms must be 
founded on some comprehensive judgment, and the valid- 
ity of the conclusion can rise no higher than the validity 
of the judgment in the major premiss. But to establish 
its validity, we need to attain it as a conclusion from 
some more comprehensive judgment in a higher syllogism. 
An endless series of syllogisms may thus arise, and must 
even be demanded for the absolute validity of any con- 
clusion. The logical understanding can arise to absolute 
truth only by an infinity of syllogisms. With all the pre- 
cision of the most exact logic, the understanding must 
hold on in its endless march, and can never hang its 
last syllogism on the confirmed hook of an absolute pre- 
miss. It must at last convict itself of the sophistry of a 
petitio principiL Its stately march from syllogism to 






THE UNDERSTANDING. 149 

pro-syllogism may be called reasoning, but until it knows 
how to employ reason in attaining universal and necessary 
principles, the reasoning has no root in reason, and is 
mere logical deduction from assumed premisses. 

Section VIII. Induction.— The deductive syllo- 
gism, just above given, is properly analytic, and proceeds 
from the whole to its parts. It is the true and proper 
form of logical syllogism. But there is a directly reversed 
form which may be used, and which can never come 
within the deductive process. This is the process of 
inductive reasoning, and is wholly synthetical, proceed- 
ing from the parts to the whole. Its validity depends 
upon the principle, that what is true of all the parts is 
true of the whole. 

The form of the inductive reasoning is a perfectly 
inverted syllogism, having the major premiss of a deduc- 
tive syllogism as its conclusion. As a deductive syllo- 
gism we say- 
Major premiss — B is the same as A. 
Minor premiss — x, y, z, are the whole of B. 
Conclusion— -x, y, z, are all the parts of A. 
But as an inductive form, we say — 

First term— x, y, z, are the parts which make A. 
Middle term — But x, y, z, are the whole of B. 
Conclusion— B is equal to A. 
As a logical formula, the inductive is as valid as the 
deductive, and wherever it may be strictly applied, the 
inductive will give a valid judgment, in its conclusion, 
for the major premiss of a deductive syllogism. It might 

IV 



150 THE INTELLECT. 

thus appear, that a pro-syllogism absolutely valid would 
in this "way be attained for our analytic logic, and relieve 
from the necessity of perpetually going back without find- 
ing an absolutely valid major premiss. Get such major 
premiss from an inductive process. But, precisely in 
this is the impracticability of relief from an inductive 
logic. The empty logical form is perfectly valid, but in 
practical application the logical form cannot be followed. 
The end sought is, to reach an absolutely universal and 
necessary judgment ; and, as this can never be attained 
by climbing the endless ladder of an analytic logic, it is 
now sought to effect it, by the interposition of a synthe- 
tic judgment in inductive reasoning. The valid form 
demands all the parts of the universal, and this is of 
impracticable attainment; and thus all its conclusions, 
practically, are wholly illogical. The inductive syllogism 
practically would be — for an instance — 

First premiss — Heat expands z, y, x, w, etc. 

Middle term — z, y, x, w, etc., are all the parts of 
universal things. 

Conclusion — Heat expands all things. 
Were the whole alphabet included in the induction, 
without an etc., the logical form would be filled, and the 
concluding judgment valid ; but so long as it is impracti- 
cable to include the universal in our middle term, we can 
not make the valid universal conclusion. No inductive 
process can thus reach to absolute truth, nor find the 
necessary and universal judgment, on which to hang the 
chain of deductive conclusions, in an analytic logical pro- 
cess. The logical understanding is thus doomed to an 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 151 

endless treacl-mill process, and can find no landing stair 
above, and no stepping off from the stairs beneath. No 
swing from deduction to induction relieves the ceaseless 
tread, for the induction of universals is yet endless. 

All inductive logic, therefore, rests as completely upon 
assumption, as does the deductive, and the whole validity 
of the judgment is, that in making the broader induction 
there is an increase of probabilities. But even this is 
in the exclusion of the higher faculty of reason. To the 
logical understanding, the probabilities of uniformity in 
nature are the result solely of a subjective habit. The 
understanding knows what has been experienced, but has 
no ground to determine what must be, and thus no right 
to conclude what its future experience shall be, except 
only that long .habit in finding things thus induces the 
credulous expectation that they will continue thus. The 
inferring of a law of nature, from any past uniformity, is 
evidently rising to a supernatural that controls nature, 
and is quite above the province of a logical understand- 
ing, to which the ongoings of experience can be nothing 
but a series of sequences ; the antecedent and the conse- 
quent having no conceived necessity of connection. Did 
not induction assume more than the logical understanding 
can reach, its widest generalizations would never amount 
to other than a mere habitual expectation for the future, 
and which, in the last analysis, would be solely this — that 
we have become so accustomed to a certain uniformity, 
it would now be uncomfortable to us that it should be 
interrupted. 



152 THE INTELLECT. 

A true induction uses the higher faculty, and fixes its 
hold upon the reason. It cognizes that nature has laws, 
and its whole questioning of nature is to the end of find- 
ing them. Hence it never goes forth to any promiscuous 
collection of facts, but always with hypothesis in hand, 
fitting this on to every fact it examines, and only trying 
this upon such facts as the very hypothesis itself demands 
should exactly fit into its archetypal conditions. Did not 
reason a' priori determine that nature has laws, and thus 
prompt to the adoption of some hypothesis what the law 
in a given class of facts is, the logical understanding 
would never set out on its errand of induction, and strive 
to gather so large a share of the parts as might give 
plausibility to the inference what, in fact, is the law for 
the whole. In the absence of complete universality in 
the induction, mere logical processes are worthless sophis- 
tries. Tried by the logical formula, they amount solely 
to the following :— 

First term — x, constitutes A. 

Middle term— 1, 2, 3, 4, constitute an indefinite 
portion of x. 

Conclusion— 1, 2, 3, 4, constitute A. 
The syllogistic conclusion, therefore, whether deductive 
or inductive, can never give absolute judgments. The 
deductive can never say the major premiss is proved ; 
the inductive can never say the universal has been 
reached. 

Section IX. Imagination.— There is often no other 
signification given to the term imagination, than that 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 153 

which the word itself implies — the faculty for making 
images. But this is not an adequate conception of the 
imagination in its strict meaning, unless we retain the 
image-making within the domain of the understanding. 
The purely sense constructions are properly images, so 
far as outline and shape can be an image ; but such 
image-making is properly fancy, and not imagination. 
A product of the true imagination must be vivified with 
thought. It must be an image which has a concrete 
being, and has grown into completeness in the conception 
that active forces operate all through it. It is no empty 
form, nor a mere dead form ; but stands forth with its 
own inherent efficiency, competent to exist and to act as 
a power amid the sphere of substantial things. If it 
use pure forms, as in geometry, they are put together in 
view of an end, and have thus the connection of thought 
through all their construction and arrangement. If it 
use the conceptions of sensible phenomena, it puts them 
together for some end of utility, or beauty, or science ; 
and the whole grouping is no fantastic arrangement, but 
made consistent through an intelligent design. Its pro- 
ducts can always be expounded by some law of order, 
and all the parts are made to subserve the general bear- 
ing of the whole intention. The image is in this way a 
complete, self-consistent production, competent to evince 
both what it is, and why it is, and why thus and not 
otherwise. 

When the connecting of the image into one whole is 
an original invention, and the product of spontaneous 
thinking, the faculty is known as the productive imagina- 



154 THE UNTTELLECT. 



4 



tion ; when it is fashioned after some former model, or 
made the likeness of some already existing thing, it is 
called the re-productive imagination. The distinction 
between fancy and imagination is as broad as between 
the sense and the understanding. Fancy is the work of 
a conjoining operation, and imagination of a connecting 
operation; while one merely appears, the other embodies 
thought. A fanciful dress merely strikes the sense ; 
imagination puts thought into it, and makes it to express 
some conformity to character and circumstance. Fancy 
may be pleased with a mere jingle of sharp sounds ; 
imagination will be interestingly intent to what is going 
on in the sounds, and making out the meaning of the 
tune they embody. 



CHAPTER III, 



THE REAS0K. 

The faculties for knowing in the sense and the under- 
standing might be fully given, and be in perfect exercise, 
but neither one nor both of them could give the capacity 
for studying themselves, and coming to a knowledge of 
the laws and principles of their own working. The intel- 
lect in the sense would perpetually employ itself in the 
operations of distinguishing the qualities, and defining 
their quantities, and its life would be wholly absorbed 
within its own perceptions. With the higher faculty of 
an understanding superinduced, the intellect would far- 
ther employ itself in connecting these perceptions into 
judgments, and think the fleeting phenomena to be the 
qualities of substances and the effects of causes, and thus 
wholly absorb itself in perceiving phenomena and judging 
them to belong to one nature of things. Or, the under- 
standing might shut itself in upon itself, and exhaust all 
its operation in the logical processes of abstract thinking, 
and live on wholly absorbed in deducing formal conclu- 
sions from empty conceptions. 

With solely such faculties the mind would have no inte- 
rest in examining how it perceived, and how it thought 
in judgments ; for it would be faculty for perceiving and 
judging only, and not at all faculty for comprehending 
its own operations. So the animal perceives and judges ; 



156 THE INTELLECT. 

apprehends the fleeting phenomena, and puts them 
together as real things ; and even passes on in the logi- 
cal understanding, and deduces general rules from the 
remembrances of past experience, and thereby learns 
utilities and attains to dictates of prudence ; but the 
whole animal life is here circumscribed, and within this 
sphere is exhausted all that can be called brute-know- 
ledge. There is no faculty for looking around and look- 
ing through these processes of knowing ; and as thus with- 
out comprehension and insight, the brute has no impulse 
to study its own mental operations, nor to attain any 
science of its own facts of knowing, or of the objects given 
in its knowledge. So man would intuitively behold the 
objects of sense, and discursively think the objects of an 
understanding, and with these faculties only would know 
the appearances and connections of nature ; but there 
could be no oversight nor insight of either himself or of 
nature, and therefore no interest nor capacity for philo- 
sophizing in reference to either. 

But man is not thus restricted in faculty. He has 
the capacity to attain principles which were prior to any 
faculty of the sense or of the understanding, and without 
which neither a faculty of sense nor of understanding 
could have had its being ; principles strictly a priori 
conditional for both faculties ; and in the light of these 
principles he has an insight into both sense and under- 
standing, and can carry his mind's eye all around, and 
all through, the processes of both perceiving and judging, 
and thereby make his knowledge to include the processes 
of intelligence itself. He can philosophize about both the 



THE REASON. 157 

knowing, and the things known, and in this way his know- 
ing becomes truly science. This higher capacity is the 
Reason. It differs in kind from either the sense or the 
understanding, and is no merely higher degree of know- 
ing through some improvement of the same faculty, but 
is wholly another kind of knowing, and demanding for 
itself the recognition of an entirely distinct intellectual 
faculty. That agency which limits carmot thereby con- 
nect, nor can either of these in the same function 
comprehend. 

The determination of the process by which both the 
sense and the understanding, and indeed all intelligence, 
are apprehended, belongs exclusively to Rational Psycho- 
logy. The principles conditional for all knowledge can 
not be given in any experience, and cannot therefore 
properly belong to Empirical Psychology ; but the operch 
tions of reason in the use of such principles come within 
the consciousness, and so far the facts of the reason are 
the proper elements of an empirical science. The opera- 
tions of the reason affect the mind, and induce an inward 
sensation, which gives a content for the inner sense, as 
truly as any exercise of either the faculty of the sense or 
of the understanding ; and this content in the inner sense,, 
from the exercise of reason, may be distinguished and 
defined and thus brought clearly into the light of con- 
sciousness, as readily as any other inner sensation. The 
reason must thus attain its necessary and universal prin- 
ciples by its own insight, and not by experience, and all 
such attainment and investigation of principles belong 
wholly to a transcendental science ; but as attained and 

14 



158 THE INTELLECT. 

applied, the results and convictions induced become mat- 
ters of fact, and our knowledge by the reason, of that 
which was conditional for experience, is in this know- 
ledge, as a result, made to be a fact of experience. 

That the results of the operation of reason come, thus, 
within consciousness, will secure a modification of all our 
experience. Our reason will affect our experience in 
every faculty. Neither sense nor understanding, as 
faculties of knowing, nor the capacity for feeling, nor that 
of willing, can be the same in the presence as in the 
absence of a rational constitution. The higher light of 
reason will reveal its results, and as these become facts 
in experience, they will at once modify all other facts in 
the consciousness. The human mind, as rational, must 
know, feel, and will, quite differently from brute mind., 
even where they participate in the same common facul- 
ties. That which is animal can be distinguished in the 
consciousness from that which is rational ; and the modi- 
fications, which the presence of the rational makes in the 
animal experience, may also be distinctly apprehended ; 
and it is this fact of the universal modification of the expe- 
rience by the reason, which makes it so important to 
discriminate the reason from all other mental faculties. 
A true psychology cannot otherwise be attained, for some 
of its most important facts cannot otherwise be appre- 
hended. It will sufficiently appear hereafter, how exten- 
sively the rational endowment modifies human feeling 
and will ; it needs here to be made apparent how the 
reason affects the sense and the understanding. It will 
also be necessary, so far as the facts appear in conscious- 



THE REASON. 159 

ness, to determine its operation in its own field, and thus 
attain its original and specific peculiarities. This maj 
be clearly, and at the same time concisely affected. 

Section I. The reason modifies the sense and 
the understanding. — In the sense we perceive, and 
from our endowment of reason our perceptions are greatly 
modified. In the inner sense there is the perception of 
mental phenomena, and all these are limited in their peri- 
ods. In the external sense, we perceive outer objects, 
and these are limited in their places and periods. Were 
there nothing but sense, we should construct only as the 
sensations were given, and as conditioned by the sensa- 
tions, and should thus have defined places and periods 
precisely where and when we should have definite pheno- 
mena. Our spaces would be as the places of the pheno- 
mena, and our times would be as the periods of the 
phenomena. When the object of perception was gone, 
its space and its time would have gone with it ; and the 
next phenomenon would be a new construction in a new 
place and period, and thus in a new space and time, and 
which would also be as evanescent as the perception of 
the object. It would be space and time just so far as 
the construction defined them, and only within these limits 
could anything of space and time be known. Both space 
and time would be lost from the consciousness, when the 
phenomenon had passed out of the consciousness. Space 
would be, to mere sense, like space in a mirror, wholly 
indeterminate and uncognizable except as the phenomena 
were given in it ; and time w ould be like time in a dream, 



160 THE INTELLECT. 

all gone so soon as the objects in the dream were gona 
from the consciousness. Space and time cannot them- 
selves become phenomena, and be. perceived, and the 
places and periods are constructed only in the denning 
of the sensations given, and thus the mere sense can give 
no more of space and time than the places and periods 
of its perceived objects. With only sense as faculty of 
knowledge, the recognition of space as one whole of space, 
and all places as parts of this one space immoveable 
within it — and so, the recognition of time as one whole 
of all time, and the periods as parts of this one time each 
fixed in its own order of occurrence — would be impos- 
sible. To the mere animal, the conception of pure space 
and pure time separately from all objects perceived, must 
be an utter impracticability. 

But the insight of reason determines at once the uni- 
versal necessity, that the space and the time must first 
have been, or the objects perceived could not have been, 
for there would have been neither place nor period for 
them. The sense attains its space and time in attaining 
its places and periods, and these are attained only in the 
apprehension of the objects ; but the reason determines 
its space and time for itself quite irrespective of the 
objects, for it a' priori sees that the objects perceived 
could not have been, but on the condition that their 
places in space and their periods in time had first been. 
The sense-space-and-time is through experience; the 
reason-space-and-time is independent of all experience, 
for it must first have been, as condition that any expert 
ence can be. In the sense, space and time are the con- 



THE REASON, 161 

dngent and transient places and periods of passing phe- 
nomena; but in the reason, space and time are the 
necessary and immutable, the universal and eternal con- 
ditions of all place and period for any phenomenon. The 
insight of reason penetrates the very act of perception, 
and determines what it is, and what is conditional that it 
could have been, and thus comprehends both perception 
and the phenomena given in it ; and thereby determines 
for every object a whole of space, of which the place it 
occupies is an immoveable part, and also a whole of time, 
of which the period it occupies is an unalterable portion. 
ISo mere abstracting of phenomena can give a whole of 
space and of time ; for the phenomena have given each 
its own place and period only, and the place and period 
as wholly conditioned by the phenomenon ; and should 
the phenomenon be abstracted, its place and period 
would fall away from the sense with it, and leave nothing 
of either space or time for the consciousness. By the 
light of reason upon all the operations of our senses, our 
perceptions of objects come to be in place and period not 
only, but in a place which is a determined portion of one 
whole space, and in a period which is a determined por- 
tion of one whole time. We perceive objects, and know 
them to have a determinate place in the one space, and 
a determinate period in the one time. So different is 
perception to a mind with reason from a mind without it ! 
And so also, in the understanding we think, and from 
our endowment of reason our judgments become greatly 
modified. The mere action of the understanding would 
think the phenomena perceived in one place and period 

14* 



162 , THE INTELLECT. 

t connected In one common ground, and thus make 
them to be the qualities of a common substance, and 
would know the aggregate qualities and substance as one 
thing. And so, moreover, it would think any alteration 
of these phenomena, as originating in some change in the 
substance induced by the working of some efficiency upon 
it, and trace all observed alterations in the same thing 
up to the source of some efficiency working upon the 
substance, and would thus know the changes as depen- 
dent upon their cause. As experience goes on, it would 
perpetuate this thinking in judgments, and connect all 
phenomena into things, and all changes into their causes, 
and thus perpetuate a determined order of experience as 
the series of events pass onward through the conscious- 
ness. But such connections of phenomena and events 
would be effected no farther than the phenomena and 
their changes occurred in the perceptions of sense. All 
the material thus afforded in perception would be worked 
up into things, and c#usal series, by the understanding; 
but ther connecting operation would be effected only as 
the occasion was afforded in the objects perceived. The 
remembrances of the past would induce its expectations 
of the future, and an animal sagacity might arise that 
would observe prudential considerations in adapting itself 
to the anticipated occurrences. But the present connec- 
tions and the anticipated occurrences would all stand in 
the occasions furnished by the experience of the senses. 
The judgment would find all its data from the perceptions 
actually occurring, and would thus be exclusively a think- 
ing and judging according to sense. Those phenomena, 



UHE REASON. 163 

which came together in one place and period wou' ' 8 
thought as connected in one thing, and those events, 
which came together in one order of succession, would 
be thought as connected in a series of causes and effects ; 
hut no judgment of a substance or a cause would arise 
as conditioning the phenomena and the events, and only 
as suggested or implied in the phenomena and events 
themselves. All is posterior to the perception, occa- 
sioned by it, and conditioned upon it, and taken as a 
conclusion from it. The whole thinking and judging is 
prompted from the perceiving, and has no impulse nor 
guide beyond the facts as exactly given in the sense 
itself. So the connections are, but nothing determines 
why they so are. 

But in the possession of reason, the human mind has 
this judgment in experience, not only, but a judgment 
over experience, determining how this must be. By its 
own insight into sensation as a fact, it determines for it 
that it must be a product, and that antecedently to an 
impression upon the organ of sense something ">eady is, 
or that impression could not be. It determines that the 
mode in which this something exists must condition what 
the affection, and thus what the content in sense shall be ; 
and consequently, that all changes in the organic affection, 
and thereby all alteration of the phenomena perceived, 
must have had their previous changes in that substantial 
something which produced the organic impression. It 
thus determines that a substance is conditional for all 
phenomena, and that a cause, inducing some change in 
the substance, is conditional for all alteration in the phe- 



164 THE INTELLECT. 

nomena ; and hereby comprehends, universally, pheno- 
mena in their substances, and changes in their causes. 
The reason truly penetrates the understanding itself, and 
determines what is conditional for all thinking in judg- 
ments. It concludes not merely, as in the understand- 
ing simply, that the manner of the appearance indicates 
a common ground for the phenomena, and also a common 
source for the events ; but more than this, that the phe- 
nomena could not have been, had not their substance pre- 
viously existed, and the changes in those phenomena could 
not have been had not their cause previously existed. 
In the light of the reason the judgment is modified from 
this — that these qualities belong to a substance; and 
these new events depend upon a cause — and becomes 
the necessary and universal judgment which no experi- 
ence can give— that all quality must have a substance ; 
and all events must have their cause. It is not the judg- 
ment, solely in experience, that the perceived qualities 
determine for the percipient what the thing is, and that 
the perceived events determine for the percipient what 
the cause is ; but that this substantial thing has perma- 
nently existed and determined what its qualities shall be, 
and the successive causes have previously energized and 
determined what the events shall be. The substance has 
perdured from the beginning, and all its altered qualities 
have inhered in it ; and the causes have operated in an 
unbroken series, and all the changed events have adhered 
to them. All phenomena are thus comprehended, through 
all time, in their permanent substances and successive 
causes. 



THE REASON. 165 

Section II. The insight of reason finds a 

SUPERNATURAL IN NATURE, AND COMPREHENDS NATURE 

by this supernatural.— Substances are modified by 
contact or combination with each other, and this occa- 
sions corresponding modifications of impression upon the 
organs of sense ; and, thus, in the ongoing modifications 
of substances, old phenomena are continually passing 
away and new phenomena perpetually coming in to the 
human experience. The present perceived phenomena 
find the conditions of their being in the proximate pre- 
ceding changes of the substances, and the phenomena 
preceding these changes had their conditions in the next 
antecedent changes, and thus backward in all the inde- 
finite series of change. This linked succession in its 
adhesions is Nature, and involves a perpetual progress 
of conditioning and conditioned, as nature goes onward, 
and a perpetual regress of conditioned and condition- 
ing, as nature is explored backward. The one substance, 
which now appears in the grape, may successively appear 
in the phenomena of the expressed juice, the fermented 
wine, the acetous fermented vinegar, etc. ; and in the 
same way, with all the changing substances and their 
events in nature. The onward changes must be thought 
as a conditioned and determined order of progress. The 
onward march can never cease, nor vary its order or 
direction, for the present is conditioned by .the past, and 
conditions all the future. No attempt to follow back the 
order can ever reach to an unconditioned, for the very 
law of thought, in an understanding, is the connecting 
through some notional efficiency, and the highest point 



166 THE INTELLECT. 

attained must still be as it is, because it is so conditioned 
by something going before it. 

The most subtle and profound German thinking has 
found no way to leap these barriers. Its, so called, 
absolute thought is still strictly conditioned thought. 
The Hegelian process of development is by perpetual 
duplications and identifications of the thought — going 
out from absolute being, through origination, into deter- 
mined existence, and thence into being pro se, etc., etc. 
— but is still as thoroughly determined through all the 
process by antecedent conditions as the materialism of 
the French Encyclopedists. The ideal Spirit, as original 
in this process of development, is utterly misnamed the 
Absolute, for he is bound ever more to continual repeti- 
tions of- himself in the living act of progress. The free 
thought, as it is termed, is free only in this, that it makes 
its own limits and annuls them, and in this free process 
of making and annulling its own limitation, it holds on in 
its progress of development by a necessary law. Just as 
the vital spirit in the germ, by its living act, goes out 
into the bud and limits itself by it, and then annuls the 
bud, and its limitation in it, by positing the bud in the 
permanent blade, and thus the tree grows as the bud is 
perpetually both produced and also left stated in the 
stock ; even so does the world-spirit develop itself, and 
in its eternal living action, limiting and annulling the 
limitation of itself, nature grows, and the universe is in 
constant becoming and remaining. There is no absolute, 
for the only supernatural is the intrinsic spiritual life of 
nature herself. So true is it, that the most athletic logi- 



THE KEAS0N. 167 

eal thought, In chase of the unconditioned being, leaves 
even his conception altogether unapproachable. In its 
highest ascent, its movement is still discursive, and it is 
forced to connect the present, by some medium, with the 
past, and its highest conception of an originating act is 
precisely the same as that of every subsequent progress- 
ing act- — a so called absolute spirit, existing only in the 
perpetual activity of a negation and affirmation of itself. 
Is man's highest faculty of knowing, that of the logical 
understanding? then is the conclusion of Sir William 
Hamilton impregnable — "the human mind can never 
know the unconditioned." We cannot look beyond the 
prison-Avails of nature. An absolute being is inconceiva- 
ble. If w T e assume to worship in any other than nature's 
temple, we must " worship we know not what," and 
inscribe our altars " to the unknown God." 

But it is itself a perpetual demonstration against this 
conclusion, that the human mind never gave its submis- 
sive assent to it. However entangled and fettered by 
its logic, it has ever fought up against the delusion, and 
resisted that sophistry which would hold it down by a per- 
petual affirmation that its first must still be conditioned 
to a higher. All the grave injunctions to humility, and 
distrust of human faculties, are here impertinently applied. 
It is no impulse from pride, and conceit of false philo- 
sophy, which so untiringly resists all attempts to make 
the mind ignore the being of its God. To reason's eye, 
" his eternal power and Godhead" are " clearly seen in 
the things that are made." With no attempt to compre- 
hend the Absolute himself, the human mind does compre- 



THE INTELLECT. 



hend universal nature in the Absolute, and stays its own 
conscious dependence upon him. The reason, by its 
insight into nature, determines for nature an absolute 
Author and Finisher. There is no attempt to attain the 
Absolute from the conditioned processes of logical thought; 
but, inasmuch as human reason knows itself, and in this, 
knows also what is clue to itself, and is thus a law to 
itself; so it knows that the Absolute Spirit must have 
within himself his own rule, and stand forever absolved 
from all rule and authority imposed upon himself by 
another. In this is the complete idea of a personal, abso- 
lute Jehovah, competent to originate action in himself ? 
without its being caused in him by a higher efficiency. 
The existence of such a being, the human reason is con- 
strained to see in his works, and to know him as creator 
of nature, and the governor and user of nature at his own 
pleasure. When the logical understanding would run up 
the endless series of conditioned connections, the reason 
cute short the vain chase, and interposes the clear con- 
ception of the self-sufficient originator of being, and in 
him finds a beginning, and in him also a sovereign guid- 
ance to a foreseen termination; and thus encompasses 
and comprehends the processes of nature, in an absolute 
Being who has begun and will also make an end. What, 
to the mere understanding, must be an endless series, 
with no possibility to reach a first nor to forecast an ulti- 
mate, has thus, in the comprehending reason, become a 
work and a providence ; the creature of an independent 
and self-existent creator; and in this absolute creator 



THE REASON. 169 

the human mind finds its God, and owns its rightful 
allegiance. 

Section III. The reason attains its own ideals 
of absolute perfection. — When any phenomenon is 
apprehended in the sense, there may be made an abstrac- 
tion of all that was a content in sensation, and there will 
thus remain in the consciousness only the pure form which 
the attending operation had constructed. This pure form 
is limit and outline only, and has in it no contained qual- 
ity. The fancy, also, may construct any such pure forms 
originally from itself, without any previous content in 
sensation, and may so modify the outline and shading in 
space as to represent any figure in nature, or to give new 
figures of its own construction which have no patterns ha 
nature. The mind may thus amuse itself in a perpetual 
sense-play of abstractions or fanciful productions ; taking 
tli 3 forms off from nature, imitating the forms hi nature, 
or constructing wholly new forms of its own. Such are 
the forms, when given in colors, that interest children, 
savages, and all uncultivated minds. Such, also, are 
mainly the forms, a little more chastened by the judg- 
ment, which appear in calico-prints, curtains, carpets, etc, 
Such a mere sense-play interests only as successful imita- 
tion, or as presenting some striking novelty. At the 
highest, it is only a chastened fancy and has within it no 
meaning, inasmuch as there is nothing of the insight of 
reason, and thus nothing properly rational. 

But our inward emotions give themselves out in certain 
forms, and passions express themselves in peculiarly 

15 



170 THE INTELLECT. 

delineated features, or in specially modulated tones. 
The insight of reason directly detects the feeling in the 
form, and finds the hidden meaning uttering itself through 
the arranged measure. It is thenceforth no mere fancy- 
sketch and sense-play, but living sentiment ; the dead 
form is now quickened by the presence of an inner spirit. 
The image, the picture, the tune, are all inspired; and in 
this insight of reason we immediately commune with a 
beating heart and a glowing soul, under that which the 
sense has presented to us as empty form. The sense can 
construct the measures and outlines ; the understanding 
can arrange these constructions, according to experi- 
mental convenience and utility in attaining its ends ; but 
the reason, only, reads the living sentiment embodied in 
the form, and discloses the hidden meaning of each pecu- 
liarity of modulated tone and delineated figure. This 
utterance of human sentiment in sensible forms gives 
beauty ; and when the disclosed sentiment is that of a 
superhuman spirit, and we stand awe-struck in the pre- 
sence of an angel or a divinity, the beauty rises propor- 
tionally and elevates itself to the sublime. 

And now, the reason, in its insight, reads the hidden 
sentiment expressed in all the forms of art and nature, 
not only ; but in its own creative power, it originates the 
pure forms which enshrine the particular sentiment the 
most perfectly, and in these attains a beauty or a sub- 
limity which is wholly its own, and can reveal itself to no 
other eye. This pure form, created by its own genius, 
which fullest and highest enshrines the intended senti- 
ment, is the absolute beauty ; the beauty, to that creating 



THE REASON. 171 

reason, which is unsubjected to, and wholly absolved 
from, the determining measures of any applied standard ; 
and which, as the beau ideal, will itself measure and 
criticise every other form it may find in art or nature. 
We may say that the artist " studies nature 5." or, even 
that he " copies nature ;" but we do not mean correctly 
by this, that he goes hunting experimentally through 
nature till he finds the right particular pattern, which he 
takes off, and henceforth makes to be his guage and 
measuring rod for all other forms of beauty. He could 
not so study nature and select his copy, were it not true 
that he already had his own archetype, which told him 
how to study and where to copy nature. The nature he 
studies and copies is that which is nascent in the sphere 
of reason, and by which he can determine when nature 
itself is natural, and of all her beauties can say which is 
most conformed to the higher archetypal nature. This 
is TO KAAON, the beautiful : comprehending within 
it all that is beauty. 

So also, in all arrangements and combinations after the 
guiding direction of a principle that puts every element 
in organic unity with the whole, and thereby makes it 
an organized system, reason has its insight that immedi- 
ately catches the hidden truth, and philosophically reads 
and expounds the whole combination. There is an idea 
which runs all through it, and determines every part of 
it, and in the accordance of such idea in the mind with 
such an mforming law in the system, there is truth; and 
such truth, so rationally apprehended, is science. But, 
as in beauty, so here in truth, the reason can carry 



172 THE INTELLECT. 

forward some necessary principle in the building up of 
a system, which shall the most completely enshrine its 
truth, and make it to subsist in itself impervious to any 
other eye ; and by this its own systematic idea, it will 
measure and criticise all the organic combinations in 
nature, or in other men's published philosophies. Nei- 
ther nature nor published sciences will be of any signi- 
ficaney, nor possess any philosophy, till the insight of 
reason shall find within them a law corresponding to her 
own pure idea. Her own ideal embodiment of truth is 
comprehensive of all utterances that can be given to it, 
in nature or in philosophy. Here is for the reason TO 
AAH0E2, the tkue: the absolute measure of all science. 
And so, finally, the insight of reason into its own being 
gives, at once, the apprehension of its own prerogatives, 
and its legitimate right to control and subject nature and 
sense to its own end, and hold every interest subordinate 
to the spirit's own excellency. That which, to its own 
eye, will most fully secure and express its own worthi- 
ness, must be its absolute rule, and will contain an ulti- 
mate right which is comprehensive of all right that it can 
recognize. The absolute Reason demanding, in his own 
right, the subjection of all nature not only, but of all finite 
reason to his own end, will give an exemplification of the 
highest possible claim of authority and sovereignty ; and 
the finite rational personality will, from an insight into 
the attributes which are essential to this absolute Jeho- 
vah, see that his own worthiness is most exalted in giving 
full effect to these claims of the Deity, and bowing before 
him in profoundest adoration. In such subjection and 



THE REASON. 173 

adoration is the highest claim satisfied, and this inherent 
excellency of the Absolute Spirit is comprehensive of all 
moral dignity. He is TO ArAGON, the good: and all 
finite goodness fades in his presence. 

Thus it is that reason is the measure of all things, and 
in its own distinctive function is comprehending faculty 
for all things. Its absolute ideals stand out unmeasured 
and unsubjected, and bring all else within their measure 
and authority. Sense cognizes the phenomenal, the 
understanding cognizes the substantial, and the reason 
cognizes the absolute. 

Section IV. Keason inspires both fancy and 
imagination, and thus is genius. — The mere fancy is 
solely a sense-play, and has no meaning ; the imagination 
embodies thought in all its productions, and has a mean- 
ing for the judgment, and an adaptation to some end. 
The naked imagination is, however, wholly from the 
understanding, and while it embodies thought, calcula- 
tion, adaptation, and thus applies to use and convenience, 
it has no sentiment ; no warm glow of feeling. It is the 
faculty for planning, inventing, adapting means to ends, 
and arranging in view of results. When the activity 
accomplishes this with the facts of nature in hand, it is 
judgment ; when it uses past experience, and goes with 
some remembered pattern out to nature to find and 
arrange its materials, it is the reproductive imagination ; 
and when it invents wholly new combinations of forces 
and influences, it is the productive imagination. But 

when the reason comes to this work, it infuses a senti- 

15* 



174 THE INTELLECT. 

ment into the fancy, and puts a living soul into every 
combination of the mere imagination. It inspires the 
whole image, whether from the fancy or the imagination, 
with living feeling and overflowing emotion. Its combi- 
nations are not merely contrivances, embodying thought 
and plan, but they all express an inner life, and have a 
true biography, and are thus properly ideal creations. 
The characters and the plot may have an infinite diver- 
sity, but the inner life, which the insight of reason sees to 
be the nature for such a creation, runs through and actu- 
ates the whole. The creation has thus its own inner spi- 
rit, and the outer life conforming to it is true to its own 
nature. It may be such a creation as the empirical 
nature never knew, but if there is the free utterance of 
its own spirit, it will not be unnatural. Whether Milton's 
Satan, or Goethe's Mephistopheles, or Shakespeare's 
Caliban ; its world is its own, and its entire action in it 
is true to its ensouled sentiment. Fancy or imagination, 
thus endowed with the higher power of reason, and com- 
petent to breathe an inner living soul into its otherwise 
dead products, becomes genius, and is the prerogative of 
man only as he is rational spirit. 

The animal may both fancy and imagine, but no brute 
was ever a genius. The brute may perceive more 
acutely, and judge according to sense as accurately, if 
not as extensively, as man ; and thus the pure construc- 
tions of fancy, and the arrangements of the imagination 
may be effected by brute mind ; but man only has reason 
superinduced upon the sense and the understanding, and 
thus man as rational, and not as animal, can give forth 



THE REASON. 175 

the creations and inspiration of genius. In the gift of 
reason, the human is a being different in hind from the 
brute, and this difference is made to pervade his entire 
mental organism. He is thereby elevated to the sphere 
of the moral and the personal, the spiritual and immor- 
tal ; becomes competent to know himself, and to compre- 
hend nature in its Author and Governor ; may commune 
in the region of art and poetry, and be both philosopher 
and religious worshipper. 



SECOND DIVISION. 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 



The human mind may be said to have a susceptibility 
to every varied form of feeling, that may come into con- 
sciousness. It is susceptible of joy, wonder, hope, the 
emotions of beauty, the obligations of morality and reli- 
gion, the affections of sympathy and love, etc., etc., and 
thus, taken in detail, man has many susceptibilities. But 
the term is here applied in the most comprehensive accep- 
tation, inclusive of the entire sentient or emotive capacity 
of the soul. Sensibility might be used as expressive of 
the same thing, but it has been more familiarly applied 
to the capacity for organic sensation: and sensitivity, 
and emotivity, have also been used as the scientific terms 
for the capacity of feeling ; but they are less familiar, 
and in literal meaning less expressive of the capacity 
intended. All feeling must be taken under the condition 
of some antecedent impression or affection of the mind ; 
and if antecedent to consciousness, as in organic sensar 
tion, the affection on the organ is the immediate occa- 
sion; or if subsequent to conscious perception, as in all 



DEFINITIONS. 177 

emotions, the object apprehended is the immediate occa- 
sion; and thus, in all cases, feeling is a susception; (sub 
capiens^) and the capacity to thus take under an antece- 
dent affection is properly a Susceptibility. 

This capacity opens before us one of the most interest- 
ing fields in psychology for our investigation, in which lie 
all the joys and sorrows incident to humanity, and where 
must be found all our subjective motives to voluntary 
action. Its careful consideration is the more important, 
since most writers on mental science have omitted alto- 
gether to give it a classification as a distinct capacity, and 
have confounded its facts with those of the will. Others 
recognize it as distinct from both the intellect and the 
will, and yet in no case, so far as I know, has it received 
a very full, nor, according to my view, an accurate ana- 
lysis. How very important such analysis is, in avoiding 
much confusion and error relative to responsible action, 
will become quite manifest in our subsequent investiga- 
tion. The intention is to give such an examination and 
analysis, as will enable us to classify accurately the lead- 
ing distinctions of feeling, and more especially as they 
stand related to the will, and look toward moral responsi- 
bilities ; although a detailed examination and arrange- 
ment of every particular feeling will not be necessary, 
nor in the present work attempted. 

The leading distinctions of feeling are numerous, and 
it is of importance that we discriminate them, for many 
purposes, though for the great end most in view here — 
in their bearing upon voluntary agency — such particular 
discrimination is of less consequence. A concise expla- 



178 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

nation and consequent definition, of these distinctions in 
feeling, will here be sufficient ; while we shall afterwards 
take up the grand generic distinctions that more imme- 
diately look towards moral responsibility, in separate 
Chapters. 

"When any impression is made upon any portion of the 
bodily organism, that is in communication with the brain 
as the grand sensorium, we have a sensation. The same 
also is true, when any inner agency of the mind affects 
itself, and thus induces an internal sensation. All this 
has been sufficiently considered under the head of Primi- 
tive Facts, and we need only refer to what has already 
there been attained. The sensation is antecedent to 
consciousness, and conditional to the perception of any 
phenomenon. We take, thus, sensation, in the absence 
of all distinct and definite consciousness, and we can 
only say of it, that it is mere Mind feeling. No object 
is thereby given, and no separation in consciousness of 
the mind from its objects, and thus, as yet, no self-con- 
sciousness is attained. Still, this blind feeling is not 
indifference to some end. There is an intrinsic conge- 
niality to certain results, which can only be known as a 
natural sympathy, or spontaneous attraction to a parti- 
cular end, and thus in its blindness, the feeling has its 
impulses in very determinate directions. It is feeling in 
a living agent, and prompts the agency, in the direction 
thus inherently congenial with itself. The impulses of 
such blind feeling are known as Instinct. 

This is the same, from the lowest to the highest orders 
of sentient beings, who ever act in the absence of self-con- 



DEFINITIONS. 179 

sciousness. The earth-worm, or the muscle, may have 
its simple and imperfect organization ; and thus upwards, 
through all ranks of animals, to the most complicated and 
completed organizations of man ; the sensation in each 
will be as manifold as the occasions for impressions upon 
living organs ; but in all cases, it will be such, and so 
much, blind feeling, going out towards its congenial ends, 
and thus, action only under the impulses of instinct. 
There is no light of consciousness, or of reason to guide ; 
but the whole is controlled by that original creative act, 
which determined the congenialities of the feeling to its 
objects. Brute nature, unendowed with reason, but yet 
fitted with its adaptations by the Absolute Reason, is 
everywhere instinctively acting out its most rational 
issues. Thus " the stork in the heaven knoweth her 
appointed times ; and the turtle, and the crane, and the 
swallow, observe the time of their coming." — Jer. viii, 7. 
Thus the ant lays up its winter store ; and the bee con- 
structs its surprising mathematical cells; and in many 
ways, the instinct of man attains its salutary ends, where 
all his high endowment of reason would fail. 

When feeling is no longer blind, but has come out in 
consciousness, so that it may properly be known as a 
self-feeling, it at once loses the directing determination 
of the natural sympathy, or congenial attractiveness to 
its end, and is thus instinctive impulse no longer. The 
agent feels in the light, and no more waits on the instinc- 
tive prompting, but seeks the guidance of conscious 
perceptions. Not feeling blindly impelled, but feeling 
waiting to be consciously led to its end, and thus an 



180 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

appetency to its object. In such a position, sensation 
lias risen from an instinct to an appetite. The feeling is 
living and active as before, and tends towards its conge- 
nial end; but it has raised itself above, and thus lost, its 
instinctive determining, and waits on perception in expe- 
rience to guide it. Thus the blind feeling of want in 
the infant, that instinctively reaches the breast, becomes 
conscious hunger in the man, and looks around for an 
object to satisfy it. 

When the feeling, as appetite, has gratified itself in an 
appropriate object, and that object has thereby become 
known as competent to impart this gratification, and thus 
there is no longer an appetency for something that may 
gratify, but the object that gratifies is itself known ; the 
sensation has risen from a mere appetite, and become a 
desire. Hunger craves without a known object, but as 
an appetite it seeks for such object ; desire also craves, 
but it is for a specific, known object, and as having 
already its understood capacity to gratify the feeling. 

In all desire, there is a craving; a longing that would 
attract the object to itself, and as it were fill up a void 
in us by it ; but when the feeling would go over to the 
object, and permanently ally itself with it, it has lost all 
its characteristic of a craving, and as it were an effort at 
absorbing it, and thus is no longer a desire, but an incli- 
nation. A desire craves, and at once expires in exhaust- 
ing the object; an inclination bends towards, and perma- 
nently fixes itself upon the object. 

There is that in the constitution, or that which has been 
subsequently acquired, which determines the direction 



DEFINITIONS. 181 

of the inclinations, and without which, and against which, 
it would be impracticable that the particular inclinations 
should be experienced. This constitutional or acquired 
impetus to a given inclination is a propensity. We shall 
subsequently better see how propensities are to be con- 
trolled, and how inclinations that are determined from 
them are nevertheless responsible; but at present the 
sole object is, to define the different leading divisions of 
feeling, and thus discriminate them in our consciousness, 
and not to look at them in their different aspects toward 
moral accountability. 

When the mental activity is passing on in even flow, 
whether thinking, feeling or willing, there may suddenly 
on occasion arise a perturbation of feeling, a ruffling and 
disturbing of the placid tranquil experience, and which, 
for the time, to a degree confuses and bewilders; arresi>- 
ing all onward movement to an object, and holding the 
susceptibility in a state of agitation, without any prompt- 
ing of inclination or direct craving of desire ; and such a 
state of feeling is properly termed emotion. The feeling 
in desire and inclination has its distinct object, not only, 
but also a distinct action towards it ; the feeling in emo- 
tion has also its object, but it is as if in commotion before 
it. In wonder, I stand before the object astonished ; in 
awe, I stand confounded; in joy, I stand transported; in 
fear, I stand transfixed ; in all, I stand before the object 
with feelings so confused and disturbed, that there is no 
direct current of feeling towards any end. That normal 
state of the susceptibility which predisposes it to emotion, 
is excitability ; and this may be a general sensibility, 

16 



182 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

that awakes in agitation with every changing wind that 
passes over the mental surface ; or it may be a tendency 
to agitation from certain sources only, and thus a predis- 
position to particular characteristic emotions. 

When the onward movement of desire, or inclination, 
towards its object is suddenly invaded, and the whole 
mind put in confusion, and yet the emotion, instead of 
arresting the current, goes on with it, and makes it to be 
a perpetually perturbed and agitated flow of feeling ; the 
desire or inclination being so strong, that the emotion 
does not suspend nor change its direction; it is then 
passion. The distinction between emotion and passion? 
is, that simple emotion is agitated feeling with no cur- 
rent, while passion has the strong current of desire still 
rushing onward to its object, though so agitated as to 
pursue it blindly and furiously. And still farther, the 
distinction between inclination and passion is, that simple 
inclination is an even flow, while passion is that flow 
disturbed by a strong emotion. A sudden danger to a 
child may so arrest the current of natural affection, that 
the parent stands transfixed in an emotion of fear ; or it 
may be that natural affection rushes on in spite of all 
disturbance, and strives to rescue hi a frenzy of passion. 
Othello's love for Desdemona is not arrested by Iago's 
representations of unfaithfulness, but only terribly agi- 
tated, and pushes on in a frenzy of jealous passion. No 
increase of emotion or of inclination can make passion, 
but strong emotion and inclination must be blended, to 
induce passion. 



DEFINITIONS. 188 

When the susceptibility is quickened by the presence 
of a rule of right, given in the insight of reason, there is 
at once the constraint of an imperative awakened ; the 
conviction of duty arises, and the feeling is that of obli- 
gation. In desire, the feeling goes out in craving for its 
object ; in inclination, it goes out to rest upon its object ; 
in obligation, the object comes to it, and throws its impe- 
rative bonds upon it. The forecasting of a time of trial, 
and arraignment before some judicial tribunal, awakens 
the peculiar feeling of responsibility ; and the inward 
consciousness of having resisted the current of obligation, 
is accompanied with the feeling of guilt; and the appre- 
hension of exposure, and subjection to sovereign displea- 
sure, induces the feeling of remorse. 

When the inclination goes out to its object, under the 
determination of a permanent propensity, it is affection. 
If this permanent propensity is constitutional, whether it 
be temperament of body or original conformation of mind, 
it is natural affection ; if the propensity is in a state of 
will as reigning disposition, it is moral affection. All 
affections are feelings, but the prepense direction to them 
may come from physical constitution, or from ethical 
disposition. 

This may be sufficient for the discrimination of the 
leading acts of the susceptibility, without here attempting 
to find every specific feeling that may come into human 
experience, and classifying them all under some of the 
above definitions ; yea, it may be that there are other 
generic forms of the activity of our sentient nature, and 
thus that farther discrimuiations mis:ht be necessary, 



184 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

before we should make our analysis complete in this direc- 
tion ; but the above is sufficiently comprehensive for all 
necessary direction and illustration, while the designed 
order of classification in our psychology will now pro- 
ceed, under quite other divisions of the feelings. With- 
out particular regard to the above discriminations, any 
farther than the obvious propriety of applying terms 
according to distinctly apprehended meanings, the sus- 
ceptibility will be analyzed, according to the permanent 
capacities in human nature, in which it has its distinctive 
exercises. Man participates in both an animal and a 
rational nature, and thus his susceptibility to feeling will 
be modified accordingly. As rational, he is also free 
spirit, and his feelings must be modified by the disposi- 
tion given to the free spirit. There will thus be occasion 
for the three Divisions of the Animal, the Rational, and 
the Spiritual Susceptibility, which will each be investi- 
gated under its distinctive Chapter. 



CHAPTER I 



THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

All our emotive capacity waits upon our intellectual 
capacity. Only as the intellect is aroused and goes out 
into specific acts of knowing, can our emotive nature be 
excited and go out in specific acts of feeling. Antece- 
dently to all self-consciousness, the knowing and the feel- 
ing are confusedly blended together, and the mind has in 
this state no capacity to any distinct emotion. The one 
mind becomes capacity for feeling, by producing itgelf 
into an emotive state. It is thus a susceptibility; a 
capacity for taking feeling, under the condition of a pre- 
ceding impression made upon it. 

Inasmuch as man has an extended intellectual capa- 
city, so his capacity for feeling may be extended, and all 
varieties of knowing must give their modifications of feel- 
ing. While, therefore, the human intellect operates in 
higher and wider spheres than the animal, and thus has 
a susceptibility proportionally elevated ; there is also a 
sphere of knowing common to both man and brute, and, 
in this particular, a sphere of feeling that is to each the 
same. Whatever may be the greater clearness ^ftid com- 
pleteness of knowledge in the same field, this will not 
modify the feeling to make it different in kind, but only 
varying in degree. In the man, it will still be animal 
feeling, and so far as the feeling waits upon the know* 

16* 



186 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

ledge given in sense, this will bring no prerogative to the 
human susceptibility. Here is, thus, the lowest form in 
which the human susceptibility develops itself in specific 
feelings, and yet a form completely and permanently dis- 
tinct from that which originates in man's higher rational 
being. The importance of this division in our classifica- 
tion is in the fact, that there is this inherent and lasting 
distinction in human feeling, separating the sensual or 
animal feelings from all others in our experience. The 
Animal Susceptibility is the capacity for feeling ivhich 
has its source in our animal constitution. 

The exercise of this susceptibility must be in such 
feelings only as terminate in the sense, or which may 
come under the judgments of the understanding rela- 
tively to objects of sense, and can never transcend the 
limits of the natural world. Were the capacity for feel- 
ing restricted to this form, we could never rise into the 
region of art, philosophy, ethics or religion ; and all the 
elevating and ennobling emotions, which dignify man as a 
being of taste, morals, or piety, would be w T holly excluded. 
Confined to the sphere of the animal constitution, all the 
feelings are impulsive and transitory, coming and depart- 
ing with the impressions made upon our constitutional 
organization. They are thus desultory and involuntary, 
and can be restrained only by reciprocal counteraction ; 
the age?Lt controlled only by setting one opposing feeling 
over against another, and strong desire repressed only by 
strong fear. In all the working of this susceptibility, 
man is only animal, though from the completeness of con- 
stitutional organization, an animal of the highest grade. 



THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 187 

The feelings of the animal susceptibility may be 
arranged under the following sections :— * 

Section I. The Instincts.— -The lowest form of 
mental excitement is found in organic sensation, and 
which is induced by some impression made upon the 
organ. It must precede, and is conditional for, an awak- 
ening in self-consciousness. In mere organic sensation, 
the intellectual and the sentient are both present, for the 
impression gives its affection to the mind itself through 
the sensorium ; but they are present as wholly indiscrim* 
inate, and therefore neither as distinct knowledge nor 
distinct feeling. We recognize the whole, not in con- 
sciousness but only in speculation, and can apprehend 
the sensations only as mental facts of knowing and feeling, 
in their confused and chaotic being. The intellectual 
agency as distinguishing and defining, must move over 
this chaos, before it can be brought out in clear form. 

But precisely in this state of undiscriminated mental 
feeling, there is an inherent impulse to action in a deter* 
minate direction. The feeling has its own congeniality 
to certain ends and objects, and thus spontaneously goes 
out under the determination of this attractiveness to its 
object. The sense guides itself, by its innate adapted- 
ness to certain ends, and thus acts directly towards its 
congenial objects, before the mind can discriminate thesfc 
objects in consciousness, and guide itself to them in its 
own light. The reptile turning under the tread ; the 
young of animals or man clinging to the breast; the 
adult just rousing from a sleep or a swoon ; are all illus* 



188 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

trations of the impulsive nature of instinctive feeling. It 
has many degrees of obscurity from its darkest strag- 
glings up to its half-conscious agency ; but whether in 
man or animal, it is everywhere, so far as it is instinctive 
feeling, the constituted congeniality and adaptedness of 
the sensation to its given result, and thus an impulsive 
working to its end in the absence of self-consciousness. 

Among the examples of instinctive feelings may be 
given, the impetus to the preservation of life ; the shrink- 
ing from pain and death ; the sudden closing of the eye, 
lifting of the hand, or dodging away of the body, when 
any danger threatens ; and, in fact, the whole action of 
infancy, the tossings in a troubled sleep, the delirium of 
a fever, the movements of the somnambulist, and the 
marvelous exhibitions of mesmerism ; all are the prompt- 
ings of blind sensation, in the absence of self-conscious- 
ness, and are determined in their intensity and direction, 
solely from the impulse of an intrinsic congeniality in the 
sensation to the end induced. What is meant by the 
instinct is, not the affection in the organ, but that conge- 
niality or attractiveness in the sensation towards the end, 
which at once gives the impulse in that direction. Hun- 
ger in the infant and the adult may be the same sensa- 
tion ; but in the infant, there is an instinctive prompting 
to the object of gratification, which is wholly lost in the 
direction that the light of consciousness gives to the 
adult. The migrating bird not only feels the air in 
which it moves, but this sensation has its attractiveness 
towards the warm gales of the south, when the rigors of 
winter are approaching. 



THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 189 

Section II. The Appetites. — When any constitu- 
tional sensation is awakened, and the instinctive impulse 
which determines it towards its end is lost in the rising 
light of self-consciousness, there is still the feeling seeking 
its end, though waiting for the perception in conscious- 
ness to guide it. In all such cases of seeking its appro- 
priate object of gratification, the feeling is properly termed 
an appetite. It is often expressed as a longing after its 
end, and this is only descriptive of the feeling, as if in its 
seeking it elongated itself in the direction towards its 
object. 

There are some sensations w T hich seem eminently to 
have this appetency to a particular end, and which are 
thus more emphatically termed appetites, as hunger and 
thirst. In a peculiar state of the great organ of diges- 
tion, when the stomach is empty of food, and the gastric 
juice, with the movement of its own surfaces, acts directly 
upon its own substance, there is induced a peculiar sen- 
sation common to all animal being, and which at once 
seeks for some congenial object to relieve it. This is 
known as hunger, when the stomach is empty of food ; 
or as thirst, when destitute of drink ; and these seekings 
or longings in hunger and thirst are eminently appetites. 
But all other constitutional sensations, which go forth in 
longing for some congenial end, are equally appetites, and 
belong, here to this division of the animal susceptibility. 
The sensation of fatigue, which longs for rest ; of pro- 
tracted wakefulness, which longs for sleep ; the longing 
for health in sickness, and for buoyant spirits in nervous 
dejection ; the going forth of animal inclination between 



190 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

the sexes ; and the longing for a shade from the heat, 
and for a covering from the cold ; they are all sensations 
seeking for gratification, and are as truly appetites, as 
the seeking in the sensations of hunger and thirst. To 
these should also be added the longings which go out for 
gratification in the sensations of all other organs. The 
eye and the ear, the smell, taste and touch, give sensa- 
tions that long for gratification as truly as the uneasiness 
of an empty stomach, and as thus truly appetitive, the 
seeking feeling should, in each case, be known as an 
appetite. 

When the experience has tried the particular object 
that gratifies the longing for relief, and thus the sensa- 
tion now goes out specifically for a particular object of 
known gratification, the appetite is then lost in a desire, 
and the general seeking or longing for relief becomes the 
direct craving for a distinct gratification. This may also 
be so agitated by the sudden presentation of the object, 
that the desire or inclination goes out furious and fren- 
zied in enjoyment ; and in this hurried rush of feeling, 
the desire becomes a passion. The appetites may thus 
readily be raised to desires, and these excited into 
passions ; but through all these forms of seeking their 
objects, they are still animal feeling only, and exist in 
brute and man of the same kind, however they may be 
modified in forms or degrees. It should also be noted, 
that the appetites are nearly allied to the instincts, differing 
from them only in rising to the light of self-consciousness, 
and thus liable to sink back again to a mere instinctive 
impulse, when an absorption in the pleasure of gratifica- 



THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 191 

tion so far obscures the discriminations of self-conscious- 
ness. An animal and a man may be so intent in gratify- 
ing appetite, and absorbed in the pleasure, as to lose all 
consciousness of what is about them, and what they are ; 
and thus absorbed, their gratification is as instinctive as 
that of the infant at the breast. 

The opposite feelings to appetite, as loathing or satiety, 
need not be particularly considered, inasmuch as they 
follow the same laws, and are subject to the same deter- 
minations, except as throughout they are the converse of 
the former. 

Sectiox m. Natural Affections.— There is a 
love which is solely pathological, originating in constitu- 
tional nature, and determined in its action and direction 
by an innate propensity. Such an inclination differs 
wholly from that spiritual affection which appropriates its 
object freely, and strikes its root deeply in the moral 
disposition. Of this last we shall speak fully, under 
another division of the susceptibility ; but of the former 
only are we now concerned to attain an adequate con- 
ception. 

There is in the parent a deep propensity to an anx- 
ious and watchful solicitude for the welfare of the child. 
This is strongest in the breast of the mother, and though 
the most tender and wakeful towards the child in infancy, 
yet is it perpetuated through all stages of experience 
until death. A benevolent provision is in this made for 
the care and nurture of the child in its helplessness, far 
more effective than any governmental regulations could 



192 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

secure. The strength and tenderness of maternal love 
may be regulated and elevated by moral and religious 
considerations, and thus come to partake of the charac- 
teristics of a virtue, but in so far as any such considera- 
tions mingle, they are wholly foreign to the maternal incli- 
nation as here contemplated. The whole feeling is that 
of nature, and to be destitute of it, in the case of any 
mother, is to be simply unnatural. The inclination of the 
father towards his child, finds its origin, also, in a natural 
propensity, but its strength and constancy depends mainly 
upon the action of connubial love. If the mother be not 
herself loved, the love of the father to his children will 
be easily overborne by opposing considerations. In law- 
ful and affectionate wedlock, the natural regard for the 
offspring is secured perpetual and active in both the 
parents. It is useless to enquire for any parental 
instinct, by which natural affection might be directed to 
a child not otherwise known ; for one condition of natu- 
ral parental affection is, that the child be not only the 
parent's own, but known to be so. That the mother 
deems the child to be her own, is a necessary, and the 
sufficient condition, that her love should go out towards it. 
This love is strongest in the parents ; reciprocated in 
the children towards the parents ; mutually directed 
towards each as brothers and sisters ; and extended to 
all the kindred, in modified degrees, according to near- 
ness of relationship and circumstances of communion. 
Nature itself prompts to communion, as occasion may 
offer, through all the family circle, but if circumstances 
prevent all intercourse, the ties of natural affection 



THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 198 

become thereby much weakened. In the mere animal, 
the maternal solicitude appears, occasionally connected 
with that of the male where they procreate in pairs, but 
continued only during the helplessness and dependence 
of the young, and lost when they are competent to pro- 
vide for themselves. It is because man can trace the 
lines of kindred descent, and diffuse his communion 
through all the circle, that he comes to perpetuate and 
extend his family affections beyond those of the mere 
animal. The occasion for their exercise and cultivation 
is thus given in man's higher endowments, but the source 
of natural affection, in man, as in brutes, is solely in con- 
stitutional pathology. It is nearly allied to the appe- 
tites. The feeling has its intrinsic congeniality with its 
object, and adaptation to its end, and thus seeks its 
object as an appetite ; but it differs both from an appe- 
tite and a desire, in that it seeks its object for the object's 
sake, and not that it may absorb it into its own interests. 
It is not merely an inclination, as tending towards, that 
it may connect itself with, the object ; but it inclines 
toward the object, solely that it may subserve its welfare. 
It is thus an affection ; but as merely pathological, and 
finding its whole propensity in constitutional nature, it is 
natural affection only. 

Section IV. Self-interested feeling. — An appe- 
tite seeks its end in gratification, and a desire craves its 
object that it may fill itself with it ; but in distinct self- 
consciousness, I may come to appreciate any object solely 
in the use I may make of it for my happiness. I con- 

IT 



194 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY.. 

template myself as a creature of appetites and desires,, 
and the objects which my appetites seek and my desires 
crave I contemplate, simply as ministering to my happi- 
ness in gratifying these appetites and desires ; and with 
the objects turned towards me in such an aspect, a large 
variety of feelings may be induced, all of which will 
agree in this, that they wholly terminate in my own inte- 
rest. It is not a mere seeking that terminates in its 
object, nor a craving whose only end is to be filled by 
the object ; but a self, that can estimate both appetites 
and desires with all their objects, as they bear upon its 
own enjoyment. All the feelings here contemplated will 
not go out direct towards any object, but will all be reflex 
upon the self, and terminate solely in self-interest. They 
will be impossible to him who could not contemplate him- 
self aside from his desires, and estimate his very desires 
and their objects as the means of so much self-enjoyment. 
Thus I shall have the feeling of joy, in the possession 
of such desires and their objects, as bearing upon my 
happiness and not for the object's &ake. In the loss of 
such objects I shall feel grief, not on their account, but 
my own. The feelings here will be mainly emotions, 
excited in reference to my own immediate interests in 
the objects. Joy in the prospect of possessing, and 
grief in the danger of losing ; hope and fear ; pride and 
shame ; tranquility and anxiety : animation and despon- 
dency ; patience and perplexity ; all may be awakened, 
as I am made to view objects in their varied relations to 
my own interest. 



THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 195 

Here also come in all the feelings connected with the 
acquisition and possession of property. All objects that 
minister to my wants touch, at once, the feeling of self- 
interest, and excite the propensity to get and retain for 
future use. As it is my enjoyment which is to be 
secured, so the objects must be in my possession, and 
my right to them capable of being defended against the 
claims of any others. An immoderate anxiety in secur- 
ing such possessions is the feeling of covetousness, and 
an immoderate eagerness to hoard them is the feeling of 
avarice. If this goes so far as to deny itself the enjoy- 
ment of the use, and makes mere accumulation the end, 
the feeling then becomes the passion of avarice, inas- 
much as the inclination to hoard is disturbed, and per- 
verted from its end. When money, or that which may 
be exchanged for the objects that may minister to our 
enjoyment, is accumulated, we have the secondary or 
derived- feelings, which regard the possessions not in 
themselves, but in their relative bearing upon such as we 
may want and may by their means attain. There may 
also be a complete passing over of the feeling to the sim- 
ple object of exchange, and in the perturbation of the 
passion, that thing be hoarded for itself. So the miser 
transfers his feeling from the objects of gratification the 
money might get, to the money itself, and refuses all 
use not only 9 but all accumulation of anything but hard 
specie. 

Here, also, are found the feelings which originate in a 
generalization of consequences. Experience abundantly 
teaches both man and animals, that certain present 



196 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

gratifications of appetite are followed by greater com- 
ing evil. They learn by experience to avoid certain 
practices, that would in themselves be agreeable ; since 
from the past, they know how to anticipate the future 
consequences. Such a generalization of experience, and 
deducing prudential considerations therefrom, very much 
modifies the feelings. Present desire is suppressed, and 
a provident foresight awakens new inclinations. The 
feelings of self-interest are addressed from a new quar- 
ter, and the judgment of an understanding according to 
sense is made a strong means for exciting the suscepti- 
bility. The man may take into his estimate a far broader 
field of experience, and deduce a much wider series of 
consequential results, than the animal ; but the intellec- 
tual operation is the same in kind, and the prudential 
feeling is of the same order in both. It is solely animal 
feeling, awakened by calculations from animal experi- 
ence, and prompts to action in the end of self-interest 
only. Mere prudential claims never reach those emo- 
tions, which are stirred by the authority of a moral impe- 
rative. There may be the gladness of success, or the 
regret of failure ; the gratulation of prudent manage- 
ment, or the self-reproach of improvidence ; but there 
can never be the moral emotions of an excusing or an 
accusing conscience. 

From considerations of self-interest there also arise the 
many painful and dissocial feelings, which are directed 
against whatever is supposed to interfere with self-enjoy- 
ment. Envy and jealousy, hatred and malice, anger and 
revenge, are all aroused amid the collisions of opposing 



THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 197 

interests. These may all become moral vices from their 
connection with an evil will, but the animal nature alone 
has within it the spring to all such naturally selfish 
emotions. 

Section V. Disinterested Feelings. — There is in 
human nature a strong propensity to society. A rational 
and spiritual susceptibility elevates to social communion 
in much higher spheres, qualifying for scientific, moral, 
and religious intercourse ; but the yearnings of the animal 
nature itself are for company and fellowship with those of 
its kind. Brutes are more or less gregarious, and even 
the animals that live mostly in solitude, seem to be forced 
to this isolation, from the scarcity of their prey or the 
necessity of their hiding places. This social propensity 
stands connected with many feelings which find their end 
in the welfare of others, and that have no reflex action 
and termination in self. Inasmuch as they refer to the 
interests of others, and are exclusive of self-interest, they 
may be termed the disinterested feelings. The self 
is gratified in their exercise, inasmuch as it is so consti- 
tuted that it enjoys the play of these emotions for others ; 
but the end of the feeling is in others, not in self, and it 
thus comes in as one of its own enjoyments, that it should 
feel for its fellows. 

Here are found all the natural sympathies of our 
nature. Other men have all the varied feelings which 
belong to our own experience, and the witness of these 
feelings in others naturally enkindles a kindred feeling 
in ourselves. Except as the selfish feelings have been 

17* 



198 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

allowed to predominate, and thus to repress our disinte- 
rested emotions, we shall naturally rejoice with the joy- 
ous, and weep with the weeping. According to the 
varied experience of our fellow-men. our own emotions 
will be excited; and we shall feel pity or fellow-pleasure, 
condolence or congratulation, just as we see others to be 
affected. Such animal sympathies extend to all sentient 
being, and the happiness or suffering of the brute crea- 
tion strongly affects the susceptibility of man. Even 
animals themselves deeply participate in these sympa- 
thies, and are moved by the glad sounds or the cries of 
other animals. There is often a quick sensibility in very 
immoral men, and the natural sympathies of some good 
men are slow to be aroused ; and thus quite aside from 
all moral disposition, the natural feelings of men may 
render some far more- amiable than others, just as some 
animals may enlist our sympathies much more strongly 
than others. 

The disinterested feelings may be modified by a calcu- 
lation of general consequences, in the same way as before 
of the self-interested feelings. Experience may teach 
as plainly what is best for others, as what is most pru- 
dent for myself; and this general consideration of conse- 
quences will at once awaken its peculiar feelings, in refer- 
ence to others on whom the consequences are to come. 
All the feelings of kindness, or natural benevolence and 
philanthropy, are here exhibited. They prompt to the 
denial of self-gratification for the happiness of others ; or 
rather, these disinterested feelings make the man the 
most happy, when he is making others happy. The 



THE ANIMAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 199 

whole is pathological only, and is kind, just as the ani • 
mal is sometimes kind to his fellow brute ; and in this 
working of natural sympathy, many acts of self-denial 
are put forth, and human distress relieved, where the 
moral susceptibility has not been at all moved, and the 
charitable deed has had in it nothing of ethical virtue. 
Even animals sometimes deny themselves for their kind, 
and thus manifest this natural kindness of feeling ; and 
in man, the disinterested feelings may be more compre- 
hensive, and his calculation of consequences for other's 
benefit far more extended, and thus his plans of benevo- 
lence may reach much farther than any provisions the 
animal may make ; but in one case as in the other, the 
whole may be the impulse of animal susceptibility only. 
In such cases, nature, not moral character, must have 
ill the credit of the kindness* 



CHAPTER II. 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

In the rational, we rise to a sphere of feeling altogether 
above anything reached in the animal susceptibility, and 
in which man as rational only, and not at all as animal, 
participates. We have already found the reason to be 
organ for apprehending absolute truth ; and faculty for 
comprehending in necessary principles and universal 
laws ; and such higher capacity of knowledge is occasion 
for a higher sphere of feeling, and which will be as 
different in kind from all exercise of the animal suscep- 
tibility, as the cognitions of the reason differ from the 
perceptions of the sense and the judgments of the under- 
standing. The feelings of the rational susceptibility are 
as truly grounded in constitutional nature as those of the 
animal, and are therefore still removed from all moral 
accountability in their origin, inasmuch as they are 
necessitated in the nature which is given to man ; but 
these are found in man as he is constituted rational, 
while the former belong to him as he is constituted animal 
being. All the rational feelings accord in this, that they 
are awakened by some insight of the reason, and never 
from any perceptions of the sense, nor any judgments of 
the understanding according to sense ; and hence they 
must be known, as originating in an entirely distinct 
sphere of our generic susceptibility, which must be care- 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 201 

fully and accurately discriminated. But though they are 
all of this one higher order of feeling, yet will they be 
found to differ in other things, each from each, according 
to the different directions of the insight of reason ; and 
therefore presenting, of the same order, still many varie- 
ties. These varieties will be clearly distinguished, and 
the general investigation will fully determine the line of 
separation between them and all feelings of the animal 
being. 

We may give all these varieties under the following 
sections : — • 

Section I. The JEsthetic Emotions. — The field of 
the Fine Arts separates itself from all else, in virtue of 
the artistic products which have their significancy only 
to the insight of reason, and this field, on that account, 
admits of only such emotions as the rational insight into 
these artistic products occasions. They awaken no feel- 
ings of appetite, nor the cravings of desire, but these 
products of art attain their whole end, in the contempla- 
tion of that which the insight of reason finds within them, 
and which is always some sentiment of a living being. 
All that belongs to this field of the fine arts is therefore 
properly termed cesihetic. (Akfynxog, conversant with 
sentiment , sentimental.') The whole feeling may be 
included in what is termed the love of the heautiful. 

These aesthetic feelings may be brought up and dis- 
criminated in consciousness, as facts to be recognized in 
empirical psychology, by the following considerations. 



202 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

The feelings of living beings can be represented to 
others, in certain shapes to the eye and certain tones to 
the ear. It is not of any importance what the content 
of color that fills the shape, nor what the content of sound 
that fills the tone ; the feeling is expressed in the pure 
shape or the pure tone, without any regard to the matter 
which fills either of them. Shape is given limit in 
extent, and tone is given limit in intensity ; and as thus 
limited, we may apply to both shape and tone a common 
term expressive of the limitation, and call it form. The 
living feeling will thus always be expressed in some pure 
form. 

Now the animal eye and ear can perceive definite 
figure and definite sound, and thus apprehend the pheno- 
mena of nature when the content for them is given in 
sensation ; but it is to the mind's eye and ear only that 
pure form, without all content, can be given ; and when 
the pure form is thus apprehended, it is not any sense, 
but the insight of reason only, that can recognize the 
living sentiment which may there be expressed. The 
feeling embodied in the form can be perceived by no 
mere animal ; it is object only to the organ of reason. 
Such rational apprehension of living feeling, in any forms, 
will also awaken its own peculiar feeling in the bosom of 
the observer ; and as the insight was all of reason, so 
the susceptibility awakened is wholly rational, and com- 
pletely distinct from the animal susceptibility. 

And now, this rational insight may attain the expressed 
sentiment, and awaken the consequent feeling, from the 
thousand scenes and sounds of nature, or from painting, 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 203 

statuary, and music ; the contemplative mind at once 
interprets them all, and thus truly communes with both 
nature and art. To the sentient spirit, visions and voices 
are on every side, and it catches each peculiar sentiment 
of the sunset, the moonlight, or the tempest ; the field, 
the grove, or the deep forest, as readily as those inscribed 
by the pencil and chisel in the galleries of art : it reads 
the meaning of the sounds in the breeze, the stream, or on 
the ocean shore, as distinctly as that which is expressed 
in the measured numbers of poetry and song. It is as 
if the cold marble had its beating heart, which was send- 
ing its warm pulses of feeling through all the statue ; as 
if nature herself had a living soul, which was looking out 
through all her features, and expressing before us all 
its deep emotions ; and so soon as the piercing insight 
catches the living sentiment, our own souls respond in 
sympathy, and we feel at once the spirit within us, to be 
kindred to that which is glowing without us, and in a 
thousand ways addressing itself to us. 

This affection is faintly induced in us by the presenta- 
tion of some mere sense-beauty, and the reason is applied 
to partially illuminate the fancy, when flowers are made 
to have a meaning, and the trees to speak, and birds 
and beasts communicate in language, and thus sentiment 
comes out in fable : but far more adequately and com- 
pletely, when all sense and fancy are discarded, and 
an inspired imagination awakes to catch nature's true 
expression, and with no phantasm, no fable, but in 
strictest reality, the rapt vision of the seer detects the 
genuine living sentiment that verily is there. This it is 



204 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

which fills all nature with beauty, when we read her 
expressions of sentiment, either as joyous or sad, and find 
them such as our human hearts can reciprocate, and with 
which our mortal feelings can blend in sympathy; but at 
once all nature rises to grandeur and sublimity, when we 
catch the sentiment of the supernatural, and read any 
where the uttered feelings of an approving or an offended 
God. 

So a creative genius may originate some new ideal of 
beauty or of sublimity, expressing the given sentiment 
more perfectly than nature anywhere presents it, and 
may labor to put his ideal into some form on the canvas, 
or on the marble, or in the epic verse, or in the notes of 
music ; and just so far as our insight can penetrate his 
inspiration, and sieze the very sentiment which he has 
embodied in his artistic product, will our feelings be 
kindled in sympathy, and our souls glow with his enthu- 
siasm. Reason only can speak to Reason. This only 
can embody the sentiment, and this only read it as thus 
expressed ; and thus the rational soul, and not the ani- 
mal, can be touched with beauty, and roused by sub- 
limity, and be conscious that it stands face to face with 
another living spirit, communing directly and intensely 
in one common sentiment. 

Section II. Scientific Emotions. — All true sci- 
ence is a comprehension of its subject in its ultimate 
principle and necessary law. Rightly to philosophize is 
to take some necessary truth, and bind up all the apper- 
taining facts in systematic unity by it. If the necessary 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 205 

and universal law for the facts cannot be yet attained, 
the facts cannot yet be subjected to science ; and the 
whole subject waits for its philosopher, as the movements 
of the solar svstem long waited for Newton. No science 
can be made of mere facts ; they are but its elements, 
and must be held in combination by some principle which 
conditions the facts to be, and to be just as they are. 
If mere omnipotence make facts to be, but follows no a' 
priori law beforehand determining how the facts must 
be, the whole is a mere arbitrary jumble of existences, as 
destitute of all possibility of science to the maker as to 
any outside observer. All induction of facts is with the 
assumption that such a conditioning law exists, and in the 
direct interest of finding it ; if it be assumed as a deduc- 
tion from a long list of consenting experiments, the general 
law thus assumed gives merely inductive science ; if the 
law itself be seen in the pure insight of reason as a' priori 
necessary for the facts, and thus conditioning the facts, 
and therefore that so sure as the a priori principle is, so 
sure the facts themselves must be, then is the science 
itself absolute in its absolute principle, and is an a! priori \ 
or transcendental science. Philosophy is thus a seeking 
for truth, and can never rest satisfied until it is found 
in its own absolute being. The principle by which she 
binds up all her facts in order, and in the light of which 
she expounds them all, must be seen by her in its own 
necessity and universality, and that the whole process of 
the philosophizing ultimately strikes its root in the rea- 
son, or she cannot yet be satisfied with her work, nor feel 
justified as having yet accomplished her mission. 

18 



208 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

Now the feeling, which gives its impulse to all such 
activity, is the love of truth ; and all attainment of truth 
awakens its own peculiar emotions in the mind ; and 
thus, all scientific feeling must necessarily originate in a 
rational, and can never be educed from any animal sus- 
ceptibility. The Absolute Reason has put his own neces- 
sary and universal laws in all nature : nothing exists as 
an arbitrary or anomalous fact, but all is as the a' priori 
principle in the creating of nature conditioned that it 
must be : and thus the power, which gave birth to nature, 
was determined in its action by absolute truth, and is 
therefore absolute wisdom ; and all sympathy with the 
truth of nature, and all impulse to the study of nature? 
and all the emotion excited by the successive degrees 
of insight into nature — -reading her deep secrets and 
detecting those inner laws which have bound her from 
the beginning, and which are themselves the accordant 
counterpart of those eternal archetypes that were in the 
creating mind before the world was — all these elevating 
and ennobling feelings are among the prerogatives of our 
rational being over our animal na/ture, and belong to man 
and are found in man, because the reason in his awn soul 
can stand over against the reason hid in nature, and look 
its truth directly in the face, and know it, and love it 7 
and communB with it, as both having the same conscious 
divine origin. The same organ that reads the sentiment 
in nature, detects also the inner laws of nature ; in one 
is seen beauty, and in the other truth ; and all the emo- 
tions of each are in the one rational susceptibility, differ- 
ing only as the direction of the insight varies. 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 207 

Section III. Ethical Emotions. — The reason has 
an insight into itself, and knows itself, not relatively only 
as distinct from animal being, but directly and particu- 
larly in its own prerogatives and capabilities. The spirit 
itself knoweth the things of the spirit ; its own spiritu- 
ality, and in this its intrinsic dignity and excellency. In 
thus knowing itself, it knows what is due to itself; what 
it has an absolute right to claim from others, and what is 
the inherent behest of its own being that it should do for 
itself. Eeason is thus ever autonomic; carrying its own 
law within itself, and, from what it knows itself to be, 
reading its own law upon itself, and binding itself at all 
times to act worthy of itself. That it should in any way 
deny itself, and act for some end that was other than its 
own worthiness, would be to degrade and debase its own 
being, and thus to make reason no longer reasonable. 
This gives an ultimate right quite other than the useful 
and the prudent. By generalizing what is, we learn 
what is useful and thus what is prudent for ourselves, 
and what is useful and thus what is kind or benevolent 
for others ; but we cannot thus determine that which is, 
and from the generalization of which we get the prudent 
and the benevolent, to be right, and cannot thus say that 
either prudence or benevolence is a virtue. If nature is 
not as it should be, then its working is to be resisted, 
and as far as possible counteracted, both for ourselves 
and others, no matter what injury nature thus working 
wrongly may do to us or others for it ; i. e. no matter, 
as nature wrongly is, how imprudent or unkind our resist- 
ance of it may be. But by the direct insight of reason 



208 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

Into itself, and seeing what is due to its own excellency, 
we find at once the law written on the heart, and by 
which we can judge of all experience in nature whether 
it be such as it should be, and thus whether prudence to 
ourselves or benevolence to others, in following out the 
generalizations of nature, are virtues or not. The ulti- 
mate rule is determined, not by the enquiry, what may 
the endless ongoings of nature do for me ? but, what does 
the worthiness of my own rational being demand of me ? 

Such rational insight awakens its peculiar feelings, 
and in which no animal perceptions nor judgments accord- 
ing to sense can possibly enable us to sympathize. We 
may have all the feelings which prudence or kindness 
involves, through the excitement of our animal suscepti- 
bility — for the rules of prudence and kindness may be 
determined by just such intellectual operations as the 
animal can perform — but we can never have the feelings 
which the ultimate right occasions, except as in our 
rational being we have the insight to find the absolute 
rights of reason itself, and therein see what its own excel- 
lency demands. All the former are solely economic 
emotions, and are of the animal nature ; the latter only 
are ethic emotions, and are of the rational susceptibility. 

These feelings come mainly under the working of 
natural conscience, and as they are of so much moment 
in all that regards our moral and accountable being, it is 
important that they receive a more extended examination. 
We thus distinguish the source of all our ethical feelings 
as originating in one particular susceptibility which is 
known as — 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 209 

THE CONSCIENCE. 

The distinguishing prerogative of the reason to know 
Itself, and thus in all cases of self-reference what is due 
to itself, is not a mere dry intellectual apprehension, but 
is accompanied with a feeling of constraint or obligement 
that is known as duty. The knowledge of what is due, 
and the feeling of constraint to secure that what is due 
shall he rendered, is duty ; and both are properly included 
in the term conscience. Not mere self-knowledge, but 
this knowledge accompanied with its imperative, is to 
(fvvsiSog, the oossckntia, which we have now to consider. 
There is the intellectual act — which has by some been 
solely taken as conscience — and the awakened feeling of 
obligation — -which has by such been called the moral 
sense — both combined in the completed work of self- 
knowledge, and each would be inefficacious to fix the 
sentiment of duty without the other ; and yet, as the feel- 
ing is the most prominent in the consciousness under the 
pressure of duty, it is mainly of the susceptibility that 
conscience is predicated in common use. In this sense 
we so consider it here, and define Conscience as the sus- 
ceptibility which is reached by the insight that deter- 
mines a ride of right. 

The conscience, as a susceptibility, will be farther 
explained under the following divisions : — 

1. Different applications of the rule will modify the 
feeling of conscience. — The rule may be viewed in refer- 
ence to what is to be done. When the claim of duty is 
felt antecedently to the act, there is always a distinguish- 
able feeling of conscience in regard to the rule. It may 

18* 



210 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

be a claim viewed as resting upon another* and the feel- 
ing awakened is one of conscience. Thus Paul speaks 
of the conviction one may have of what another ought, 
or ought not. to do, and calls it " conscience." " Con- 
science, I say, not thine own, but of the other."— 1 Cor. 
x, 29. This might be fully expressed by one man saying 
to another — ' I am persuaded in my conscience that such 
is your duty.' It may be a claim viewed as resting upon 
myself. So again, Paul speaks of his prejudiced appre- 
hension of duty as conscience, when he says, " I verily 
thought with myself that I ought to do many things con- 
trary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," — Acts, xxvi, 
9; for he subsequently says of it, "Men, Brethren, I 
have lived in all good conscience before God unto this 
day." — Acts, xxiii, 1. This might be directly expressed 
by the man in saying, ' I feel bound in conscience thus 
to do.' 

Or, the rule may be viewed in reference to ivhat has 
heen done. When an imperative is felt to have been 
applicable, but the action under it has already occurred, 
there is also a very distinguishable feeling of conscience, 
accordingly as with or against the imperative. It may 
be in reference to what another has done. Thus Paul 
and his fellow-laborers did what others thought they 
ought ; and this conviction of others is termed " con- 
science," — "by manifestation of the truth, commending 
ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God." 
— 2 Cor. iv, 2. This may be plainly stated by one man 
to another in saying, i I conscientiously commend, or I 
conscientiously condemn, your conduct.' It may be in 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 211 

reference to what I my self have done. Thus the Scrip- 
tares speak of " a good conscience/'— 1 Peter, iii, 16, 
and of " an evil conscience."— Heb. x, 22. When I 
view my conduct as conformed to the rule, I shall feel 
self-approbation; and when as contrary to the rule, I 
shall feel self-condemnation ; and I can directly say, ' I 
have an approving conscience ;' or, ' I have a guilty 
conscience.' 

These varied feelings of conscience are all from an 
apprehension of the rule of right in some aspect, and can 
be awakened only in such an apprehension. I may see 
that I have been imprudent or unkind, and feel regret 
or ashamed ; but only as I see that I have violated an 
imperative of duty, shall I feel guilt, or remorse. Such 
feelings may sometimes be termed moral feelings, but 
this is only because they have their connection with moral 
and responsible action, and not that the workings of con* 
science are themselves participants in moral character. 
The action of conscience is necessitated, and as truly in 
constitutional being as an appetite, and cannot be deter* 
mined voluntarily. Whether good or wicked beings, all 
must approve of the right and feel obligation, when it is 
apprehended; and all must feel complacency or remorse, 
as they see they have kept or violated it. 

Wilful and persevering violence to conscience may 
make it callous to all feeling, and for such desperate 
perverseness the man must stand responsible. Such are 
spoken of as " past feeling," — OSph. iv, 19 ; and as " hav- 
ing their conscience seared with a hot iron." — 1 Tim. iv, 
2. But this effect upon the conscience, and all the feel- 



212 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

ings any way induced in it, are of nature and not of 
the will ; and are not thus moral, in the sense of direct 
responsibility. 

2. The operation of conscience is ever in accordance 
with the apprehension of the rule. — All awakened suscep- 
tibility is as the apprehension of its appropriate object. 
As the painting is apprehended to be beautiful, or the 
philosophy to be true, such must be the feeling awakened 
thereby, and no change of the feeling can be made but 
by a change in the apprehension of the object ; and thus 
also with the conscience. It can be aroused to feeling 
by nothing but an apprehension of a rule of right, and 
the feelings will follow the apprehension whether it be 
correct or erroneous. No conscience can feel obligation 
to what is apprehended to be wrong, nor other then obli- 
gation to what is apprehended to be right : and in the 
same way after the act ; no conscience can feel remorse 
for apprehended well-doing, nor other than remorse for 
apprehended evil-doing. The conscience, as a suscepti- 
bility, can never act deceitfully. As the light reaches 
it, such must be its consequent feeling, and thus be ever 
true to the intellectual apprehension. 

A good man is not to be disturbed by the suspicion, 
that perhaps the feelings of his conscience may have been 
delusive ; nor the pangs of a bad man relieved by any 
persuasion, that perhaps his remorse is from a false 
conscience. When conscience approves, the act in that 
point is virtuous ; and when it condemns, the act in the 
point of condemnation is vicious. No matter if the rule 
was really a nullity, and conferred no obligation from 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 213 

itself; nor, even if its claims were really the very opposite 
to what was apprehended ; the action having been as the 
rule was apprehended to be, the conscience must accuse 
or excuse accordingly, and the man in that act must 
have been vicious or virtuous accordingly. The point 
of responsibility is not in reference to the feeling of the 
conscience ; that must be true to the apprehended appli- 
cation of the rule. Hence Paul decided, that though 
meat offered to an idol, and afterward sold in the market, 
had no defilement, because " an idol was nothing," yet 
if any one who thought differently ate of it, to him it was 
sin. " He that doubteth is damned if he eat, for what- 
soever is not of faith" (belief that it is right) " is sin." 
— Rom. xiv, 23. The feeling of the conscience never 
deceives. 

3. The rule may be apprehended partially or errone- 
ously. — The simple rule of right is in the same ground 
ever the same thing, and thus, knowing nothing of muta- 
bility in itself, can never give forth conflicting claims. 
But finite reason is not always veracious. The medium 
through which the rule is brought within the apprehen- 
sion may give a perverted insight, and thus contradictory 
obligations may be felt, in reference to the same matter, 
bj two different persons or by the same person at differ- 
ent times. Conscience may bind in one case, and loose 
in another. This perverting medium is made an occasion 
for conflicting convictions of duty. The conscience, as 
susceptibility, is true in its feelings to the apprehension, 
but the apprehension is perverted. So in the case of 
Paul, above ; he " verily thought that he ought to do 



214 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," 
while Stephen would lay down his life, and Paul himself 
afterwards, in the conviction that no action might be 
contrary to the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. The rule 
was not double, in this case, and duty in conflict with 
itself. The reason's eye, in Paul, was made to look 
through the perverting medium of pharisaical education 
and prejudice. His apprehension of the rule was erro- 
neous, and the feelings of the conscience went out accord- 
ingly. And perversions as effectual may originate in 
various sources. 

Partial and obscure light may prevent a clear appre- 
hension, and thus one man have far more adequate views 
of duty than another — as, a heathen cannot know all the 
duties of a Christian. A bias of self-interest may induce an 
obstinate perversion — as, the maker or vender of ardent 
spirits may determine to look at his business through the 
general custom ; or, the license of the civil law ; or, the 
assumption that another would do worse than himself in 
his place. A long habit may preclude all examination 
— as, for a long time, good men pursued the slave-trade. 
Violent passion may ruffle the mind, and so disturb it as 
to distort the truth; and even a fit of anger may be 
induced, for the very purpose of excluding truth from 
the conscience. The point for all responsibility, and all 
correction of conscience, is in the insight of the reason ; 
not at all in the feeling, which must be as the apprehen- 
sion. If a false view was unavoidable to the man, he 
is not responsible for it ; if it could have been avoided, 
in that, and to just the extent of the neglect, is his guilt. 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 215 

Honesty and care in attaining the rule are incumbent 
upon all, and the sin in a perverted apprehension may be 
very great, 

4. The conscience must be the controlling suscepti- 
bility. — The animal susceptibility may prompt to action 
through appetite and desire, and the rational suscepti- 
bility may also give the impulse to action through the 
love of beauty, or the love of philosophic truth, and these 
may sometimes be in harmony with the impulse of duty; 
but whenever they may come in collision with the feel- 
ing of obligation, that must control and restrain them all. 
Truth and beauty are higher than sensual gratification, 
but duty is higher than philosophy and art, and thus 
virtue is above all. In all collision of motive, the appeal 
to conscience must be supreme. This is abundantly 
manifest. To violate conscience, for anything, subjects 
the man to conscious baseness ; and the loss of self-re- 
spect is the necessary loss of his manliness, and the high- 
est evil that can be incurred. No added pleasure to any 
susceptibility could be sweet, when conscience reproached 
and accused. Not only is conscience found to be the 
susceptibility that has this highest prerogative ; it mani- 
festly ought to be so. If we could conceive of a being 
so made, that appetite might domineer over conscience, 
and conscience quietly yield as if appetite had the right 
to be supreme ; it would at once reflect a reproach upon 
the maker of such a being, and the insight of reason would 
infallibly announce that he had been made wrongly. A 
perversion of conscience is therefore man's utter ruin ; 
and, of all incorrigible delinquents of the claims of duty, 



216 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

we may say emphatically, good were it for sucli that they 
had never been born. 

Where the conscience fully controls, the agent is virtu- 
ous ; and the weaker capacity is as truly righteous, in 
such a case, as the stronger. But while moral character 
will thus be as the control of conscience, the moral worth 
of the agent must also include the capacity. Adam, in 
innocence, was as truly virtuous as Gabriel; but the 
angel, having the higher capacity and thus the greater 
strength of faculty in righteousness, is of more moral 
worth than the man. The true dignity must be the com- 
pound of character and capacity. And as much as con- 
science must condemn for all known violation of duty, as 
truly as it must approve for all fidelity to right, so it 
must follow that every moral being carries the elements 
of his own retribution within him. The material for his 
own hell or heaven is laid up in every man's conscience. 

Section IV. Theistic Emotions. — The animal eye 
can perceive the phenomena of nature, but as there is no 
insight of reason, it cannot apprehend a God in nature. 
Inasmuch as to animal being there can be no theistic 
perceptions, so to it there can be no theistic emotions. 
But in the things that are made, the rational mind of 
man sees the eternal power and Godhead of the Maker. 
Nature is comprehended in a personal Deity, who origi- 
nates it from himself, and consummates it according to his 
eternal plan. Such recognition of a God, at once occa- 
sions its own peculiar emotions. Feelings are awakened 
that could arise from no other object in the insight. 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 217 

Man, from his conscious weakness and helplessness, is 
obliged to feel his need of such a full source of supply, 
and his utter dependence upon it. In God alone he 
lives and moves and has his being, and is utterly empty 
without this unbounded fullness. 

Without including here other feelings than such as are 
necessarily awakened by the apprehension of a present 
God, it is manifest that such a rational insight must lay 
its foundation in the mind for its peculiar rational suscep- 
tibility. Not only can no perceptions of the sense enkin- 
dle these emotions, but they differ also wholly from such 
as are awakened by the apprehension of beauty, or truth, 
or ethical right. They make the man, in his very con- 
stitution, a religious being. He must feel awe and rever- 
ence, and entire dependence, in the presence of Jehovah. 
The very source of all beauty and truth and right is 
here, and thus the Absolute Good is known, and in this 
is an occasion for faith and love and worship, when the 
willing spirit shall joyfully yield itself in full devotion. 
Such homage of the spirit will open a new susceptibility, 
hereafter to be considered as the spiritual ; but the capa- 
city for this is our rational being as it gives the insight 
to a God, and such apprehension of the Deity necessitates,, 
in wicked as in holy men, the peculiarly constitutional 
emotions we here term theistic. Without the insight of 
reason, as revealing God in nature, this susceptibility 
could not be, and with such an insight and revealing, 
this distinctive susceptibility must be. Man can no more 
divest himself of his religious nature and responsibility ? 
then he can of his ethical being and obligation. 

19 



218 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

Now, in all the above sources of feeling, ^Esthetic. 
Scientific, Ethic, and Theistic, we have a wide sphere 
of susceptibility altogether removed from, and elevated 
above, the animal. And it is necessary to observe, in 
conclusion, only this, that the impulse to action in all the 
rational susceptibility is wholly and consciously different 
from that of the animal susceptibility. The animal 
nature craves, and makes the man uneasy and unhappy 
in his want, and forces his activity for a supply. He 
must work to relieve his want ; he must get happiness 
only through toil. But the rational nature knows no 
uneasy cravings, and demands no toilsome work. It 
seeks not to devour its object, but simply to contemplate 
it; not to use it to the end of filling " an aching void," 
but to keep it as having perpetually a serene compla- 
cency in it. The action that goes out towards it, is ever 
cheerful and glad, and is thus known as thejrfay-impulse. 
The soul goes out after beauty and truth as a delight, 
and seeks virtue and the worship of God as a blessed 
activity. The Beautiful and the True, the Right and the 
Good, are taken themselves as ends, and contemplated 
in their own dignity, and giving full complacency in their 
own excellency, and are not to be degraded as means of 
gratifying any appetite, nor held as mere utilities for 
satisfying wants. Our activity is spontaneous and joyous 
as it terminates in either of them, and is never to become 
the forced and irksome toil of trying to make them sub- 
servient to us. The artist does not wish another to bring 
out his own ideal forms of beauty for him, nor the philo- 
sopher wish another to make up his science to his hand, 



THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 219 

We do not choose that some others should practice virtue 
nor offer worship for us, and then give us the profits in, 
some rewarding gratification ; if we cannot have the 
serene complacency in our own practical virtue and piety, 
there is no reward for us. One may hire another to do 
his work, but no one will thank another to do his playing. 
The animal susceptibility may get its gratification by any 
barter, and buy in happiness at any market; but the 
rational susceptibility has its end only in the contempla- 
tion of that which is made to conform to its own perfect 
ideals. There may be the love of the beautiful, of the 
true, of the right, or of the good ; but in all these cases, 
the love must be solely for the object's sake, and not 
that the object can be sold out in exchange for what may 
gratify some clamorous appetite. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

This sphere of the susceptibility is quite as important 
and as strongly marked as either of the others, and in 
order to a true psychology, it is also as necessary that it 
be carefully discriminated from both the animal and the 
rational, as that they should be accurately distinguished 
from each other. 

Both the animal and the rational susceptibility are 
constitutionally in human nature. In so far forth as 
man is animal, he has constitutionally the capacity to all 
animal feeling ; and in so much as he is endowed with 
reason, he has in this higher constitution the capacity to 
all the feelings of the rational being. These compose the 
entire sphere of constitutional susceptibility, inasmuch as 
the animal and the rational exhaust all the distinctive 
kinds of sentient life in which the human nature was 
created. Within this constitutional sphere of feeling, 
appetites and desires, impulses and obligations, may con- 
tinually be going forth, and in them the race of mankind, 
as constitutionally endowed, will all participate. In 
these activities of sentient being, man can only differ in 
degree and not in kind, inasmuch as all participate in 
the same original constitution. The feelings are neces- 
sitated in nature when the occasions for them are given, 
and as the tiger must have his appetite for flesh, and the 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 221 

ox Ms appetite for grass, so the man must have his whole 
sphere of constitutional susceptibility necessitated in its 
own nature. The feelings can change, on the given occa- 
sion, only through a change of the physical constitution. 
But in the spiritual susceptibility, we come to a sphere 
of feeling in all these respects widely different. The 
rational nature of man is so superinduced upon the 
animal nature, that while each preserves its own func- 
tions and faculties, they yet together make but one being, 
and the man both as animal and rational is a unit in his 
own identity. To have solely the animal nature is still 
to be a thing, but to have the endowment of rationality 
is to be elevated from thing to person. With this comes 
self-law, conscience, responsibility, and proper immor- 
tality. In this personality is perpetual spiritual activity, 
and as this goes out in its direction towards its objects, 
and stands permanently disposed in the direction to dis- 
tinct ends, it gives to itself a proper spiritual disposition. 
The disposition is as abiding as the given direction, and 
responsible when found to be for or against a known 
rule. This going forth of the personal spiritual activity, 
which is properly its disposition, determines character ; 
and so far as the disposing of the activity comes under 
the approbation or condemnation of conscience, the dispo- 
sition has a moral character. And here, we are to fix 
our attention upon this spiritual disposition, and we shall 
find it to be an independent source of feeling, and thus 
occasion for a distinct sphere of susceptibility, which 
has not yet been at all recognized. Altogether aside 
from the activities of the animal and the rational suscep- 

19* 



222 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

tibilities, peculiar feelings will originate in the spiritual 
disposition ; and while all of constitutional being remains 
the same, a change of this spiritual disposition will at once 
induce a change of feelings, which can only follow their 
appropriate modification of disposition. In this we shall 
find a clear consciousness that the spiritual susceptibility 
has its source in the personal disposition, and that it is 
utterly exclusive of all that belongs to constitutional 
nature, whether of the animal or of the rational. It will 
be necessary to determine respectively, the process in 
which this spiritual susceptibility is induced ; the leading 
distinctions which it may embrace ; and also the point at 
which responsibility attaches itself to this susceptibility. 

Section I. The process in which this spiritual 
susceptibility is induced. — In the former cases of sus- 
ceptibility we have found them already potentially hi the 
constitutional being. All that was necessary to awaken 
the actual feeling was the presentation of the proper 
occasion to constitutional nature. No process was requi- 
site in order to the attainment of the susceptibility, but 
the hand that made us had already put it within us. 
Not so in this case. Mere constitutional being will not 
originate it, but the constitutional faculties must have 
their direction ; the personal activity must have disposed 
itself toward some end ; a disposition, determinative of 
the state in which the spiritual personality is, must have 
been effected ; and though we determine nothing here 
of the time or the conditions of this process, yet the fact, 
that such a personal spiritual disposing must occur, may 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 228 

be made clear in the consciousness, since, without the 
disposition, we are conscious that the connected feeling 
cannot be. Animal and rational nature may have their 
complete constitution, but only as the person has a spirit- 
ual disposition, can he be susceptible to the peculiar feel- 
ings here in view. We have, thus, to notice the process 
by which a particular disposition determines a suscepti- 
bility to its own peculiar feelings. 

We may first take an illustration, from a case where 
a disposition is deliberately formed, A young man may 
have just concluded his college course, by which he has 
become intellectually fitted to enter upon any course of 
direct professional study. The question presses for a 
decision, 'What distinct profession shall I pursue V He 
may, perhaps, readily dismiss all others, but is quite inde- 
terminate in reference to the profession of Law or of Divi- 
nity. He will study for the Ear or the Pulpit, but which 
he should take he cannot at once decide. He deliber- 
ates ; estimates his own qualifications and circumstances ; 
calculates carefully all- the consequences that may be 
apprehended : and ultimately disposes the whole mind in 
a direction to one pursuit. We now suppose it to have 
been, judiciously and conscientiously, the Gospel Minis- 
try ; and with the mind so made up, there is no need of 
a perpetual energizing to keep it in that direction: it has 
already gone into a fixed state, and become a specific 
bent or permanent disposition. And here, the point to 
be noticed is, that this disposition to the Ministry has 
induced a susceptibility to feelings and emotions, which 
could not have been in his experience, had his roind been 



224 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY 

disposed on the profession of Law. Every day will come 
up feelings and sympathies, that originate wholly in a 
susceptibility determined in this disposition of his mind. 
His constitutional susceptibilities have not at all changed, 
for constitutional nature has not at all been modified ; 
but the mind has become disposed in a new direction, 
and bent to a new and permanent end ; and at once, in 
this permanent disposition, there is a new susceptibility 
to feeling, and which susceptibility could in no other way 
have been induced. The same may be said of any other 
determined pursuit. The Physician, the Farmer, the 
Sailor, the Soldier, etc. : all have their classes of sympa- 
thies and emotions peculiar to each other, and which can 
not be exchanged the one for the other, but in the corre- 
sponding change of disposition. The constitution remain- 
ing wholly unchanged, these feelings become possible, in 
the securing of the appropriate disposition for them. 

Still more prominent is the peculiarity of some feelings, 
where the disposition has not been so deliberately formed. 
Wealth, or fame, or pleasure, may be proposed as ends 
to be attained ; but the strong bent of the mind, in its 
particular direction to either, may have been effected 
gradually, insidiously, and almost imperceptibly to the 
man himself. The disposition may have had its begin- 
ning and growth so unnoticed, that it may emphatically 
be said of the man, " ye know not what manner of spirit 
ye are of." But the disposition, whether avaricious, 
ambitious, or voluptuous, has in it its own specific suscep- 
tibility. The avaricious man has feelings which neither 
the ambitious nor voluptuous man, as such, can have. A 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 225 

miser's feelings are not possible but in a miser's disposi- 
tion. Physical organization and constitutional tempera- 
ment may be of any modification; but the avaricious 
sentiment cannot be, without the spiritual disposition 
bent on hoarding money. Change that disposition and 
you change all these peculiar feelings, without at all 
changing the constitutional nature, or the constitutional 
susceptibilities. 

So, in a more eminent degree, and without here attend- 
ing at all to the subjective manner in which the disposi- 
tion is secured, let the whole bent of the mind be directed 
to the rule of right as its end, exclusive of any gratifica- 
tion that can come in conflict with it, and this is the 
disposition of the righteous man ; and in this disposition 
solely is the susceptibility of the good man. No matter 
what his constitutional nature and its susceptibilities, he 
cannot feel as the good man does, nor sympathize at all 
in any sentiment he has, except as he has first attained 
the good man's spiritual disposition. The susceptibility 
to virtuous feeling is no where else but in the virtuous 
disposition. 

Constitutional nature as it is, the susceptibility to con- 
stitutional feeling, whether animal or rational, is already 
in it ; and the occasion needs only to be presented, and 
the feeling necessarily follows. But no modification of 
constitutional nature can give the spiritual susceptibility. 
That must be induced in quite another process. The 
spirit itself must dispose its activity to some determinate 
end, and thus have its perpetual bent in one direction 
and on one object, and in that disposition will ever be a 



226 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

susceptibility peculiar to itself; capacitating the man to 
feel after its peculiar manner, and needing nothing but 
the appropriate occasion, and with this the specific feeling 
spontaneously awakes in exercise. With such a consti- 
tution, under given occasions the constitutional feeling 
must be ; and with such a disposition, under given occa- 
sions the spiritual feeling also must be. The process to 
the spiritual feeling is not at all any appeal to constitu- 
tional susceptibility, but the securing of the spiritual dis- 
position, and an appeal to the susceptibility that is in it. 

Section II. Some of the prominent distinctions 
in spiritual sentiment. — When, as above given, there 
is the making up of the mind in reference to a particular 
occupation or pursuit in life, such a disposing of the 
spiritual activity will in itself give the susceptibility to 
the particular feelings and sympathies which belong to 
that employment, and which constitutes the tie of a class, 
by virtue of whose connecting bonds all the members are 
held together in kindred sentiment. This is a most 
widely operative principle in human society, and is at 
the basis of the multiplied castes, associations and parties, 
into which mankind arrange themselves, and constitutes 
that esprit du corps which is so pervasive and effective 
in all party movements. So soon as the disposing of the 
spirit in the direction to the party-end occurs, the suscep- 
tibility to its peculiar sentiment is possessed, and the tie 
of the class attaches. There may mingle the influences 
and interests of many constitutional gratifications, but 
quite independently of all natural appetite or constitutional 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 227 

desire, the spiritual sentiment is the common bond of 
attachment among the members. Varied as this may be 
in the multiplied associations of life, it forms a distinct 
class of spiritual feeling, and whether for good or bad 
ends, and for the attaching of good or bad men together, 
it is everywhere the same principle of a kindred senti- 
ment among those of a kindred pursuit, and is variously 
named as sectarian feeling ; party spirit ; denominational 
sentiment; class sympathy, etc. This tie of a class, 
though so pervading and effective through all communi- 
ties, is still among the least prominent, and less gene- 
rally noticed sentiments of the spiritual susceptibility. 

Among individuals there may be kindred interests, 
pursuits, and constitutional temperaments ; and these may 
render two, or any number of them, mutually congenial 
to each other, and the intercourse of such may be inti- 
mate and highly agreeable. But, as yet there is no 
spiritual sentiment, and thus no living bond of affection 
between them. The changes of business and pursuit, of 
interests and habits, may throw out some and introduce 
others, or even wholly remove the man to other congenial 
social circles, and he feels little loss and finds for it ready 
compensation. But when there has been a decided com- 
mitment of soul, and a reciprocal flowing out of the spirit 
each to each, there is in this a union of dispositions ; and 
at once a cordiality of feeling springs up, much deeper 
and sweeter than all the congenialities of common interest 
or similiar temperament. The sentiment of friendship 
is experienced, and like David and Jonathan, the soul of 
one is knit to the soul of the other. When this mutual 



228 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

commitment of soul is between two persons of different 
sexes, and to the end of exclusive connection and cohab- 
itation for life, the sentiment is that of connubial love ; 
and becomes the tenderest and deepest of all human 
attachments. It is the blending of personalities, and the 
source of all the connections of consanguinity. Neither 
the feelings of Friendship, nor of Connubial Love can be, 
without the actual commitment of the spirit to the object, 
and thus the attainment of a permanent disposition, in 
which alone is the susceptibility to the cordial sentiment. 

So, when a man commits his spirit to the highest 
advancement of the liberties and civilization of his coun- 
try, he has the disposition of a patriot ; and in this, the 
susceptibility to every patriotic sentiment. No matter 
how strong the feelings of self-interest, nor even how 
controlling the sentiment of party ; there is nothing of 
patriotism, until there is the disposing of the spiritual 
activity to the end of his country's highest freedom, and 
in this patriotic disposition is the susceptibility to every 
patriotic feeling. 

The above are all instances of spiritual sentiment, 
which cannot be said to be themselves radically distinc- 
tive of personal moral character. The disposition, out 
of which the susceptibility to the spiritual feeling springs, 
is not sufficiently deep and controlling to settle the ques- 
tion of moral character. Strong friendship, deep connu- 
bial love, and strenuous patriotism may be, where there 
is no radical universal commitment to eternal righteous- 
ness. They are affections ; sentiments ; and which may 
be termed amiable ; but they are not properly virtues, 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 229 

except as contained in a more radical spiritual disposition. 
Passing all these, and other similar spiritual sentiments, 
as though originating in a disposition, yet not so deep as 
to be called virtuous ; we turn to such as come com- 
pletely within the sphere of moral goodness, and stamp 
the character as truly righteous. These will be of 
distinctive elevation, according to the elevation of the 
disposition. 

The purely ethical sentiments. — When the man has a 
spirit devoted to the ultimate rule of right, and which 
excludes every end that collides with its own highest 
excellency and worthiness ; such disposing of the spiritual 
activity, in a permanent state, is a spiritual disposition, 
and in the comprehensiveness of its end, subordinating 
all that can conflict with it resolutely to it, it is a virtu- 
ous disposition; a flowing out towards right for its excel- 
lency's sake. In the very fact of attaining such a dispo- 
sition there is the securing of a susceptibility to feel all 
the sentiments which a good man ever experiences. 
Except in the virtuous disposition, the susceptibility to 
virtuous sentiment cannot be ; and thus, until the man's 
spirit is disposed towards the right, exclusively, compre- 
hensively, and permanently, he cannot by any possibility 
share in the good man's feelings. He can have no 
susceptibility to truly virtuous sentiments. In the dispo- 
position is the spiritual susceptibility to all the compla- 
cency, joy, and blessedness, of the truly moral man. As 
yet, the disposition knows no higher end than the ulti- 
mate ethical right, and the exclusion of all gratifications 
that may conflict with the spiritual excellency; and, 

20 



230 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

thus, the sentiments can rise no higher than the purely 
ethical. 

The religious sentiments. — When a man recognizes 
the being of a personal Deity ; absolute in his own per- 
fections ; maker of himself and all things, and perpetual 
benefactor ; and also recognizes his own dependence and 
accountability ; there comes an occasion for the disposing 
of the spiritual activity to quite another and more exalted 
end, than when simply contemplating the excellency of 
his own spiritual being. The devotion of all I am, and 
all I have, to this Absolute Lord, is my duty and his due. 
And now, such a disposition, actually attained, at once 
induces a susceptibility to higher sentiments than the 
purely ethical. The feelings of religious confidence, 
divine gratitude and love, adoring praise and worship 
immediately break forth, and I have all the glad experi- 
ence of the truly religious man. These feelings could 
not be, until first the disposition were attained, but this 
disposition is found in no constitutional temperament, 
and only in the supreme bent and inclination of the soul 
towards God. 

The truly christian sentiments. — When the man as a 
conscious sinner, helpless and hopeless in his condemna- 
tion, recognizes the crucified and ascended Redeemer ; 
and knows that all his own morality and all his religion 
is induced by his gracious interposition, and that through 
repentance and faith, pardon and justification with God 
may be applied for his sake, and this consistently with 
every claim of God and his whole government ; there is, 
then, an occasion for a disposition of spirit more than 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 231 

merely religious. And when a disposition, directly going 
out and fixing upon this crucified Savior, as the only source 
of help and hope, is truly possessed ; it has in it a suscep- 
tibility to feelings, which no merely religious devotion to 
God in the man's 1 own name can ever attain. The love 
that has much forgiven ; the gratitude for grace imparted ; 
the confiding constancy, which owes all and commits all 
to this only Savior ; all these christian sentiments now 
come out, and the spirit glows with emotions to which 
angels must themselves be strangers. Till this disposing 
of the soul on Christ, this susceptibility to christian feel- 
ing and sentiment was impossible. The source of the 
feeling is no where else but in the christian disposition. 

One condition is common to all forms of the suscepti- 
bility, animal, rational and spiritual, namely, that there 
must be the apprehension of the object to which the feel- 
ing is directed ; and as that object is congenial or other- 
wise, so the feeling will be for or against it. The differ- 
ence between both the animal and the rational as consti- 
tutional, and the spiritual as responsible, is not in their 
conditions of the apprehension of their respective objects, 
w T hich all must have, but in the different sources of their 
origin. The constitutional is in nature, and can be 
changed only in changing nature ; but the spiritual, as 
responsible, is in the spiritual disposition, and may be 
changed in a change of disposition. So, in the christian 
feelings, which all have Jesus Christ as their object ; as 
the disposition towards him is, such will be the suscepti- 
bility ; and when Jesus Christ as object is presented and 
intellectually apprehended, the feelings must come forth 



232 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

accordingly. Where the disposition is towards Christ, 
the feeling will be christian, and -where it is against 
Christ, the feeling will be unchristian. The disposition 
must be towards Christ, or christian emotions cannot be 
experienced. 

Christian Love is widely distinct from any constitu- 
tional feeling. We may speak of a love of fruit, or a 
love of beauty — one of the animal, and the other of the 
rational susceptibility — but these are both determined in 
our constitutional structure. A love of the Lord Jesus 
Christ is possible, only as the spiritual disposition has 
gone out towards him. So long as the spirit is disposed 
on some other object, the feeling of christian love cannot 
be ; there is no susceptibility to it. The religious claims, 
induced in the apprehension of the truth regarding Christ, 
are unwelcome, and their pressure becomes irksome, and 
hence the feelings of aversion and hatred are the neces- 
sary result of pressing christian truth upon an unchristian 
disposition. Evangelical Repentance has the same law 
in the mind for its exercise. As a feeling, it is godly 
sorrow for sin. That spirit, which is fully disposed 
towards Jesus Christ, cannot look upon sins, at any time 
committed, without feelings of penitential grief; while 
another spirit is fully set against Christ, and the dishonor 
which sin occasions to Christ is no occasion of sorrow to 
such a soul, nor can any view of sin against Christ bring 
out from such a disposition, any other feeling than har- 
dened impenitence. The disposition must change, or 
there is no susceptibility to godly sorrow. Evangelical 
Faith, in so far forth as it is a joyful confidence in Christ 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 233 

as a Savior, is a feeling, and springs from a spiritual 
susceptibility in a christian disposition, like christian love 
and repentance. Of all proposed methods of salvation, 
the spirit has gone out to Christ in his appointed way, 
and with such a disposition a new feeling of confiding 
security and sweet reliance is at once called into exercise. 
But let the disposition go out after any other Savior, and 
this feeling of confiding christian repose cannot be in 
exercise. 

So of all christian sentiment ; there must first be the 
christian disposition, or there can be no susceptibility to 
the feeling. The modifications of no constitutional sus- 
ceptibility can secure them. They are spiritual, and 
distinct from all other spiritual emotions, in that they 
originate in a susceptibility which must stand only in a 
christian disposition. 

Section III. The point at which responsibility 

ATTACHES TO THE SPIRITUAL SENTIMENTS. — It is quite 

necessary to note, that neither the spiritual susceptibility 
itself, nor any of its exercises, are the products of the 
will. They are never volitions, and cannot be directly 
willed into being. They are as necessary, in their condi- 
tions, as those that belong to constitutional nature. The 
disposition being given, the susceptibility is determined 
in it; and then, to this susceptibility, the occasions being 
supplied, the specific feelings are necessitated. How 
then may I be commanded to sorrow for sin ? to rejoice 
in the Lord ? or to feel the complacency of the virtuous 
man? 

20* 



234 THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

Were these sentiments the product of constitutional 
nature, we could have no responsibility for them. All 
men participate in the constitutional feelings, in virtue 
of their common humanity. Difference of degree will 
make no difference in kind, and what the susceptibility 
is has been determined in the constitution given by the 
Creator. This can be changed only by a physical power 
which changes the constitution. That the lion should 
eat straw like the ox, would demand that the physical 
structure should be wholly changed. That known trans- 
gression should escape remorse, would demand that the 
man lose his rational nature. The constitutional feelings 
are without the sphere of responsibility. 

But in one radical point, the spiritual susceptibility 
completely differs. Constitutional nature continuing 
unchanged, the spiritual susceptibility changes in the 
change of disposition. The susceptibility must be as the 
spiritual disposition is, and hence, so far as man is respon- 
sible for his disposition, he is consequentially responsible 
for the susceptibility and its feelings which are deter- 
mined in it. In this disposing of the spiritual activity, 
ihere may be various ends to which it is directed, that 
shall be altogether too limited to determine therefrom 
any moral character. A good man and a bad man may 
both be disposed to the same employment for life, and 
'have all the kindred feelings which come in under the 
tie of a class, and such disposition determines nothing in 
respect to their radical character. The disposition is not 
yet brought under the determination of a rule of right. 
But let it be known, that this disposition towards the call- 



THE SPIRITUAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 235 

ing for life is involved in a broader disposition towards the 
right ; the authority of God ; or the will of Jesus Christ 
as a Savior ; and such broader disposition will have its 
radical character, giving also its own character to the 
subordinate disposition of the mind towards its objects 
of pursuit. Thus always shall we be able to determine 
any lower disposing of the spiritual activity upon its end, 
by the character of the broader ; and that disposition, 
which is inclusive of the universal right as end. must give 
its radical character to the man and all his minor dispo- 
sitions of spirit. A disposition towards God, in Christ 
Jesus, to the exclusion of all that can stand in opposition, 
must be radically a holy disposition : and a disposition 
towards anything else as end. to the exclusion of God in 
Christ, must be a sinful disposition radically. 

As then radical moral character is as the generic dis- 
position of the man. so the radical spiritual susceptibility, 
which is in this disposition, will have its character accord- 
ingly ; and all its sentiments, as in actual exercise, will 
participate in the same. So far thus, as the man is 
responsible for his radical character, is he responsible for 
his spiritual susceptibility and all its sentiments and emo- 
tions. Tliis spiritual susceptibility is his heart, in a 
moral and scriptural meaning ; and all its exercises of 
feeling are the different specific moral affections, as 
distinct from all feelings of constitutional susceptibility. 
The consideration of the question of freedom, in the radi- 
cal disposition, can only be given in the investigation of 
the Will. 



THIRD DIVISION. 



THE WILL. 



This division of the mental capacity has been very differ- 
ently viewed by psychological writers, and its various 
facts contradictorily apprehended and expounded, and in 
consequence it has been a field of most strenuous contro- 
versy. Vital points in morality and theology are deter- 
mined, by what is deemed to be fact in regard to some 
of the peculiar characteristics of the human will, and 
more especially in reference to the question of its free- 
dom ; and inasmuch as all dogmas concerning divine 
sovereignty and human responsibility must be modified 
by the views taken of voluntary agency, it is not surpris- 
ing that different assumed positions should be both 
attacked and defended with great zeal and determined 
perseverance. 

Questions of fact, in reference to the will, can only be 
settled on the field of psychological investigation, since 
both morality and theology assume their facts of human 
responsibility, and do not at all attempt to expound them. 
Consciousness is the only criterion, and in any points of 



THE TRUE POINT OF VIEW. 237 

disputed fact the decisions of universal consciousness, or 
common sense, must be the conclusive umpire. It is as 
competent to make the valid appeal to consciousness, for 
the facts of the will, as for those of the intellect and the 
susceptibility ; since, although the ultimate principles in 
each are beyond consciousness, yet the facts of the insight 
of reason and the convictions it gives are within the con- 
sciousness for the will, as truly as for the intellect or the 
susceptibility. Other considerations which are also facts 
of consciousness, may be adduced as confirmative and 
explicative of the facte of the will, but direct conscious- 
ness is the ultimate appeal in all cases of impracticable 
reconciliation of opposite opinions. Caution, candor and 
comprehensiveness are all that is necessary in making 
the final appeal ; and after such a process of trial, each 
one of us may as authoritatively announce his conclusion, 
as any renowned champion on either side of the question. 
The mind, as capacity for willing, puts forth exercises 
different in kind, from those which proceed from it in its 
capacities of knowing or of feeling. All varied cogni- 
tions and emotions may be distinguished from volitions, 
and it is concerning the capacity for the latter that we 
now directly enquire. The exercises of the capacity for 
willing may be distinguished by various names, and 
though generally comprehended in the term volitions, yet 
may the willing be variously, disposition, purpose, choice, 
preference, etc., according to its peculiar characteristics. 
Other points of conscious distinction from all exercises 
of knowing and feeling will readily present themselves 
in the exercises of willing, but the grand matter for 



238 THE WILL. 

enquiry is about their difference from the others in the 
point of their necessity. In all the exercises of the intel- 
lect and the susceptibility, one fact has been invariable 
through all the examination, that, in the specific condi- 
tions, the exercise was wholly unavoidable. In such a 
condition, the intellect found no alternative to the know- 
ing, and none to the knowledge just as it then was in the 
experience. The perception could only be of the red 
color, when there was a redness ; and the judgment could 
only be of an affirmative predicate, when there was the 
including subject. And so aJso of the susceptibility; 
under the particular condition there was no alternative 
to the particular feeling, inasmuch as such conditions 
were a sufficient occasion to no other exercise of the 
susceptibility than the actual one. They have been thus 
wholly in necessity, inasmuch as under the given condi- 
tions no other way lay open. The great enquiry is, does 
this necessity extend itself over the capacity for willing ? 
Are its exercises, in their conditions, without an alterna- 
tive ? If, as a matter of consciousness, they have their 
alternatives, how are the different ways open ? and how 
is the certainty determinable, in the given conditions, 
which way shall be taken ? 

These questions involve the determination of the inhe- 
rent constitution of a capacity for willing ; and that acti- 
vity, which can go out to its object with still an open 
alternative, must possess a constitutional being different 
from an activity that goes out to its object with no alter- 
native. Unless the distinct conception of two such differ- 
ent activities be first clearly apprehended, all questions 



THE TRUE POINT OF VIEW. 239 

of fact in relation to the exercises of the will must be 
premature, inasmuch as with no such stand-point of 
observation, or only looking at the exercises from one 
only, the satisfactory determination of all question of 
necessity and liberty in the facts must be impossible. 
An intelligible definition of a capacity for willing cannot 
be given, until first there has been attained the concep- 
tion of an activity that, in going out to one end, had, at 
the point of going forth, an open way to a different end. 
If there is no such conception possible, then is no concep- 
tion of liberty possible, that is not in its expression only 
another name for necessity. And if such assumed con- 
ception is only a disguised and surreptitious introduction 
of some connection of nature's causes and effects, then 
must the exposure of the delusion throw that conception 
back among necessitated physical agents, no matter how 
loud the pretension may have been of having explained 
the question of human freedom by it. We cannot, thus, 
in the investigations of the will, at once define what we 
mean by it, and then put its manifest subdivisions into as 
many Chapters — as we have done in the consideration 
of both the intellect and the susceptibility — but we must 
first, with much care, explain what a necessary concep- 
tion of will is, in its own constitutional being. This will 
best be done, by presenting a number of distinguished 
differing conceptions, and which are either some form of 
the working of mere natural cause and effect, without any 
alternative, sometimes openly so avowed, and at other 
times mistakenly deemed to rise above the necessities of 
nature ; or, an insufficient, because incomplete, assump- 



240 THE WILL. 

tion of the distinctions of spiritual activity above nature ; 
neither of which can give a conception of the will that 
shall accord with the convictions of consciousness. Such 
conceptions need not be referred to any authors, since 
oftentimes the real author has not been the most promi- 
nent expounder, 



CHAPTER I. 



A COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF THE CAPACITY FOR WILLING. 

The mind, as a self-acting existence, has been already 
considered. On occasion of the presence of an appro- 
priate object, it is capacity for an energizing, or going 
forth, towards jJiis object. But this simple capacity for 
a nisiis, or energizing towards a presented object, is no 
distinguishing mark of any particular capacity of the 
mental activity, but is common to them all. The intel- 
lect and the susceptibility, in all their different faculties 
and functions of agency, are as much capacity for going 
out in activity towards their objects as the will, and such 
energizing cannot therefore be discriminative of the wilL 
We have already distinguished in consciousness the differ- 
ent forms of energizing in knowing and in feeling, and 
have thus discriminated the susceptibility from the intel- 
lect ; and here, we must distinguish in consciousness the 
different form of energizing in the willing from that pre- 
sented in the feeling, and thus consciously discriminate 
the susceptibility from the will. In all the activity of 
the constitutional feelings, there is nothing of liberty, but 
a consciousness, in the conditions, that the feelings are 
determined from the nature of the case, and are thus in 
that case unavoidable. Nor is there any other distinc- 
tion, here, in the spiritual susceptibility, than that per- 
haps we may find the disposition, in which the suscepti- 

21 



242 THE WILL. 

bility is, to be avoidable, and thus mediately the suscep- 
tibility be the subject of change ; but always on condition 
of the given disposition, the feeling is unavoidable. The 
point of this unavoidability -will give opportunity for dis- 
criminating between feelings and volitions, and it is in this 
direction that we need to look in attaining the conception 
of what is properly a capacity for willing, in distinction 
from a capacity for craving, or for feeling obliged. In 
other words, it is a consciousness of freedom, in some 
sense, that discriminates a capacity for willing from a 
capacity for feeling. 

With the attention fixed on this point, we shall make 
the surest progress to a complete conception of the will, 
by first noticing some of the prominent conceptions that 
have been formed, and distinctly marking their incom- 
pleteness or their error, in not conforming to this con- 
sciousness of avoidability in all proper acts of will. We 
need only to state the conceptions in the most concise 
manner that perspicuity will admit. 

Section I. Different conceptions of the capa- 
city foe willing. — We will give these, in the order in 
which the conception seems most to strive that it may 
rise above the necessitated connections of cause and 
effect in nature. We do not say that the order will give 
a constantly nearer approach to truth, but that the 
authors of the successive conceptions seem, in this pro- 
portion, to have apprehended what the true conception 
demanded. 



THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF WILL. 243 

The will is simply capacity for preference. — Prefer- 
ring to do, or not to do, is an act of the will, and thus to 
have the capacity for preferring is to have a will. This 
is determined from some uneasiness in the mind, which 
is to be relieved by the doing, or the not doing. This 
uneasiness of mind, craving for relief, is desire ; and the 
greater the uneasiness, the stronger is the desire ; the 
highest degree of which must determine the direction of 
the preference, or will. The question of freedom has no 
reference to this capacity for preference, or will; but 
solely to the power to do, as we prefer, or will. To 
prefer is from one power ; to do, as we prefer, is from 
another power ; the first is that of will, and the last only 
admits the question of liberty. To enquire whether the 
will is free, is thus wholly irrelevant, and merely the 
absurdity of seeking if one power is not another power. 
Liberty belongs to the power doing, not to the power 
willing. The agent, as willing, has no freedom; but 
only in doing as he wills. Whether he shall choose is 
determined from the uneasiness of desire ; but whether 
he shall do as he chooses depends upon his ability, and 
in this is the sole question of his liberty. All must 
will as the stronger desire ; the ability or not, to put in 
execution the preference, is the determination of the 
free-agency. 

Here then is, expressly, a conception of will unavoid- 
able in its action; and only the fact of executing the 
choice, in overt action, is avoidable. But nothing more 
need be noticed to show its conflict with human conscious- 
ness, than that the man feels responsible for his choices ; 



244 THE WILL. 

his inward preferences ; and not merely for their outward 
execution. He is conscious of some alternative in the 
willing, and not merely in the doing as he may will. 

The will is power to choose zvhat is agreeable to the 
moral taste , or heart. — The moral taste, or heart, is con- 
nate or concreated. It is as truly in the constitutional 
being as his sensuous taste, or his natural susceptibility. 
It may be created agreeably to righteousness, and there 
is the power to choose the right; or it may be born 
agreeably to sinfulness, and there is no power to choose 
other than the sinful. The taste, or the heart, is thus 
of nature, and though called moral, yet is not so because 
avoidable, but only because it is at the fountain of all 
moral character. It is no part of the capacity for will- 
ing, but the will is the executive capacity for carrying 
out its impulses. This prompts agreeably to its own 
nature, and then the executive agency, which is the will, 
is free to go out in the execution or attainment of the 
congenial end. The will can go out in execution, but 
can have no reflex action upon the taste, or heart, itself. 
This is beyond the reach of the voluntary agent, and 
any change must be wrought by the hand that originally 
made it ; the voluntary action is solely in going out in 
execution, and not at all in going back to the modifica- 
tion, of the moral taste. The will is thus free, only in 
the sense of unhindered. There is no avoidability in its 
action, for this action is determined in the natural moral 
taste ; but it goes out freely, that is, unobstructedly from 
anything in the heart, upon the congenial objects of the 
moral taste. The exercise of the will is not at all the 



THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF WILL. 245 

agreeable prompting of the taste, but the going out in 
gratifying such natural prompting. 

This conception of the will recognizes rightly, the 
necessity for some permanent source of moral activity, 
which shall give its own character to the man and all his 
action. But it quite erroneously puts this in constitu- 
tional nature, and denies that it is any part of the volun- 
tary capacity, or that it has any avoidability in reference 
to the agent himself. The man's moral taste is as truly 
in his constitution as his sensuous taste, and his aversion 
to God is just as physically unavoidable as his aversion 
to wormwood ; and each are alike back of all action of 
the will, which is determined by them. But our con- 
sciousness testifies that we are responsible for the heart ; 
and also for the executive acts which go out in gratification 
of its desires ; and that this heart must itself be somehow 
within the voluntariness of our being, and not wholly 
beyond the capacity for willing. It must itself be a dis- 
position; an inclination and bent of our spiritual activity ; 
and not a component element in our constitution. To 
satisfy our consciousness, we must recognize, in some 
way, an avoidability in both the characteristics of the 
moral taste and in the executive acts for gratification, but 
this conception allows no alternative to the man in either 
of them. 

A power of arbitrary Self-determination. — The capa- 
city for willing is a power absolute in its own arbitrament, 
and can both act, and direct its acts, in its own naked 
self-determination. No matter what the motives on each 
side, or if all be on one side ; the mind is competent to 

21* 



246 THE WILL. 

suspend itself in equiUbrio. and act either for or against 
the motives from its mere determination to do so. It 
wills solely because it will, and no other reason is needed 
than that it determines itself to do so. This conception 
may not have been original with any person, but was 
that to which Edwards forced his opponents, by logical 
consist encv from their method of statement. 

It involves two absurdities : viz. one. that the will is 
blind, and chooses for no reasons, and is thus a choice 
without anv interest in choosing, and which is really the 
same thing as a choice without choosing ; and another, 
that all volition is itself the product of a determination, 
and therefore that the determination to will is itself a 
willing, and needing a previous determination for itself, 
and that again another for it. and thus on endlessly with 
no first act of will. The real conception was doubti 
that of power to originate and direct action : but from its 
incompleteness and obscurity in not apprehendii 

re could be no origination of choices without condi- 
tions, their expression of it was made to involve the fore- 
going absurdities. There was manifestly the conviction 
that the human will had more in it than the unavoidable 
successions of natural cause and effect, but the conception 
and expression were imperfect and logically indefensible. 

Witt 18 tJu r to choose • s*. — Happiness is 

the only good, and benevolent action the highest good. 
because productive of the highest happiness. In order 
- 1 an act of will, there must be some object appealing to 
a susceptibility as an occasion for gratification, and the 
end of willing is such gratification or happiness. There 



THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF WILL. 247 

is, essentially in mind, a generic susceptibility -which 
craves all attainable happiness, and in all comparative 
happiness desires the greatest, and which may be known 
as self-love. The estimate of what the greatest happi- 
ness is, which the mind makes in the light of self-love, 
determines the choice. This estimate may be erroneous, 
but in simple certainty the will follows it. The will may 
affect the estimate in subordinate, but not in predominant 
ends. The honest enquiry for the greatest happiness 
on the Tfhole gives occasion for an unbiassed judgment, 
and such decision may be termed the estimate of reason; 
but a sudden or violent impulse of appetite may pervert 
the judgment, and such perverted decision may be known 
as the estimate of passion. 

From the constitution of the human mind, there is thus 
ever an occasion for bringing before it the end of reason 
and the end of passion, and thus ever the conditions for 
a choice, which shall gain or defeat the end of the man's 
being in highest happiness. In suspending all former 
purpose, and holding all present passion hi abeyance, 
and carefully weighing all consequences, a rational esti- 
mate may be made, and the predominant purpose taken 
accordingly ; but when passion is permitted to operate, 
the estimate is perverted, and the will wrongly directed. 
On this estimate of the understanding all radical charac- 
ter depends, inasmuch as there is the certainty that the 
choice will follow the estimate of the highest good. 
When making the passionate estimate, there is simple 
capacity to the opposite choice, but not the condition for 
it from the neglect to deliberate. A rational estimate 



248 THE WILL. 

will always determine the highest happiness to lie in the 
course of benevolent action, and the governing purpose 
following accordingly, the man is radically righteous in 
character ; but the passionate estimate leads to the pur- 
pose of present selfish gratification, and the character is 
radically sinful. 

This conception clearly apprehends the necessity of 
given conditions in order to choice, and thus wholly 
excludes a merely arbitrary will ; and also assumes that 
there must be power to the opposite ; but it has its 
incompleteness and thus its error. The most serious evil 
is felt on its ethical side, as it makes virtue to stand in 
simple prudence. I find myself, and nature about me, 
to be such, that I shall make myself the most happy in 
striving to make others happy ; and from purely pruden- 
tial reasons I do this, and am therein virtuous ! 

But its psychological defect is also obvious to close 
inspection, and originates in tins want of all truly ethical 
end, and thereby really excludes all alternative and 
avoidability in the act. The happiness of benevolent 
action is in the gratification of a constitutional suscepti- 
bility, and the craving for it is as purely pathological as 
in the case of any other appetite. Man finds himself so 
made that he is happy in making others happy, just as 
he is happy in taking food when hungry, or rest when 
weary. To withhold the kind action, when self-love 
prompts, would be a self-denying sacrifice ; since the 
strongest want can be satisfied by nothing but benefi- 
cence. There is no insight of reason which sees what is 
due to the spirit, and which thus in its own right makes 



THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF WILL. 249 

a demand ; but a logical deduction from consequences 
determining greatest happiness, and thereby waking self- 
love to feel a want. The " estimate of reason" is a rea- 
soning from sense, and no intuition of reason itself which 
sees the law written within ; and nothing of this meets 
the testimony of consciousness. A man may be kind 
from mere constitutional good nature, or from the calcu- 
lation of greatest happiness in the long run, but he will 
also be conscious of a higher claim to kindness in the 
worthiness of his own character from it, and that to be 
unkind will debase his spirit, no matter how much hap- 
piness may be paid to him for being so. Not any 
reward in happiness, even for eternity, can equal the 
claim of the man's conscience for benevolent action, but 
that the man himself may be just what reason sees he 
ought to be, let the happiness for it be as it may. 

And farther, such a conception of the will gives no 
alternative, and thus no avoidability in the acting. It is 
not a will in liberty, but solely the brutum arbitrium of 
the animal. Gratified constitutional susceptibility is ever 
one thing, as motive to will, however distinct the parti- 
cular appetitive cravings may be. It is still highest 
happiness, whether attained from one generic suscepti- 
bility or from an aggregate of many, and nothing but a 
question of degrees in happiness can come within the 
estimate, with no regard to hind. Benevolent action is 
better than anything else, solely because it gives more 
happiness. There is no real alternative between five 
degrees and ten degrees of the same thing, and no condi- 
tion for any choice between them. The happiness from 



250 THE WILL. 

following the rational estimate differs in nothing from the 
happiness in following the passionate estimate, so far as 
it is to influence the will, except that it is greater, and 
to this a less degree offers no condition for choice. The 
very reason for taking at all is the reason for taking the 
highest, and with such an estimate there is no alternative. 
The taking of the highest is not choice, but an act in that 
condition inevitable. An animal might as well leave its 
food, half satisfied, for no other reason than that it is half 
its want, as the man take half the degree of offered hap- 
piness only, when the whole is the sole reason why he 
should not. 

The will is pure spontaneity. — The vital principle in 
the germinating seed goes out in its development to 
maturity. There is an inner law, which determines its 
whole order and form of development ; but to this, and 
all the process of its growth, the plant is insensible. The 
animal not only grows, under its modified law of order 
and form, like the plant, but it also goes out to the 
attainment of its objects under the control of its appetites. 
It has sensation, but no self-consciousness in which the 
law of its growth and the determining principle of appe- 
tite is apprehended. Man grows, and feels appetitive 
cravings, not only, but his spirit is a spontaneous activity 
going out freely in an order and direction of which itself 
is conscious. It has conditions and laws of agency, but 
these are no restraint upon it and only principles within 
it, according to which it acts in its own gladness sponta- 
neously. It is joyous in its self-consciousness, in its law 
of action, and in its activity ; and thus the whole of 



THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF WILL. 251 

spiritual life is a cheerful play, with no toil, no drudgery, 
no bondage. It shakes off all outward incumbrances, 
and rises above the sphere of all nature's annoyances, 
and lives in its own sphere, tranquil and delighted. The 
spirit is thus contemplated in its own pure activity, and 
such conception of spontaneous action is that of the will. 

This conception sees the necessity of rising above the 
fixed order of connection in natural cause and effect, and 
predicating a proper will only of the spiritual existence ; 
but its law is inherent in its own constitution, and deter- 
mines all its activity as really as the physical laws in 
nature determine its ongoing. The only difference is 
that the spirit knows itself and its laws, and acts on with 
no reluctance. Its action in thought has the same spon- 
taneity as in will; for thought has its inherent law 
through all its processes, and the spirit goes out in think- 
ing according to its conscious laws with the same joyous- 
ness. Indeed, with Hegel, thought is personality ; and 
absolute thought, excluding all nature's hindrances but 
not its own inherent laws, is true freedom. The concep- 
tion of free thought is thus this very conception of free 
will, a spontaneity of spiritual activity going out lovingly 
according to its own law. There is conceived no law as 
an imperative, and thus a joyousness in the spontaneous 
obedience of moral rectitude ; but solely a law inherently 
directive, and the spirit gladly going through the process 
which its inner law fits it for. 

Other modifications of the conception of a will might 
be given, but the foregoing are among the most promi- 
nent of such as are deemed to be but partial and thus 



252 THE WILL. 

erroneous, and these may be sufficient to introduce us to 
the next enquiry. 

Section II. What is a complete conception of 
the will? — The susceptibility, as we have seen, prompts 
to an executive act in the attainment of its end ; if the 
object is agreeable, the prompting is to attain it, and if 
disagreeable, to avoid it. But thus far, the action is 
wholly of the susceptibility, and is mere feeling. Beyond 
this prompting of feeling, the animal life may go out to 
get the object and gratify the want ; and there is found 
in this, an activity which is out of and beyond the suscep- 
tibility, and is no more a feeling but an executive act to 
satisfy a feeling. This may be termed brute-will ; ani- 
mal-choice. But it is really animal impulse ; a living 
activity impelled by sense ; and not at all a will in 
liberty. It acts when the susceptibility prompts, and as 
this prompts, and can change its action only by a change 
of feeling in the susceptibility. When two conflicting 
feelings prompt, that which it is deemed will give highest 
gratification must nullify the promptings of the weaker, 
and the executive act is unavoidable. The occasion 
for an alternative act is not given. There may be the 
faculty of judging, from apprehended consequences, what 
will give on the whole the highest happiness, and thus 
what action is prudent ; and if the higher gratification 
of self-love, on the whole, come in competition with only 
the lower present gratification, the prudential impulse 
must prevail, inasmuch as the less impulse is no alterna- 
tive. And in the same way, the faculty of judging what 



THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OP WILL. 253 

will make others most happy may determine for us what 
action is benevolent ; and if this appeal is to a suscepti- 
bility which, in gratification, is highest happiness on the 
whole, the kind impulse must overcome and take the 
action in that direction. In any way that highest grati- 
fication is judged as attainable, in that direction the 
executive act is unavoidable, for there is no alternative 
presented to it. The whole of animal being is bound in 
the necessity of nature, and all that we may say of brute- 
will must still include in its conception, the fact that the 
issue is unavoidable. Nature knows no liberty, and the 
animal being is wholly within nature. The conception 
of will involves within itself something supernatural. 

The true conception of a responsible Will is in a capa- 
city to originate, from the spirit itself, an act in contra- 
vention of the animal impulse. It is a power that may 
counteract the executive agency which gratifies natural 
want, and in this give a sovereign master over the animal 
being. This must be wholly a spiritual capacity, that it 
may originate action completely regnant over all natural 
appetite. This capacity for spiritual origination gives 
the competency to suppress animal gratification, and thus 
opens a proper alternative in permitting the animal execu- 
tive act to go out in gratification, or putting forth the 
spiritual act which shall preclude it. Nature may be 
suppressed by the free action of the spirit. There is a 
freedom not only in the fact of unhindered activity, for 
this is true of the execution of appetite by the animal, 
but a freedom in the start ; a beginning, and not a pro- 
jection from something behind ; a true origination in the 

22 



254 THE WILL. 

spirit, and not an impulse from the sense. In this capa- 
city for free origination, there is complete condition for 
a proper libration between the happiness of gratified 
want and the duty of secured worth, and which is truly 
will in liberty. That the spirit can, from itself, so act in 
controlling the sense, secures a valid alternative to sen- 
sual gratification, and thus the freedom of avoidability. 
Looking, thus, at the human mind, which combines 
both animal and rational being, we say, that a concep- 
tion of will must involve something else than mere execu- 
tive agency to gratify want, even spiritual origination of 
action in restraining and controlling gratification, and 
thus full capacity for alternative agency. The animal 
can have no will in liberty, since however free from 
prevenient hindrance in gratification, it is impelled by 
constitutional nature a' tergo. The angel, as purely 
spiritual, may have alternatives in spiritual ends towards 
which he may originate action, and may thus stand 
between spiritual wickedness and spiritual holiness, and 
take on demoniac malignity or maintain angelic purity ; 
but man must be studied as only in the flesh, and what- 
ever soul-guilt he may contract, there will always be 
blended with his sin the inworking sensual lusts, and thus 
the human will must be conceived as capacity for avoid- 
ing sensual gratification by the claims of the reason. 
The Absolute Reason is above all occasion for alternatives 
to perfect rationality, and is free, in the absolute accep- 
tation of spiritual origination with no conflict. Deity 
cannot be tempted with any alternative to right, except 
as the divinity becomes incarnate ; but, as our psycho- 



THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OE WILL. 255 

logy is human, we have only the human not the divine 
will to investigate. 

Election may be used in a different sense from selec- 
tion; the last being only a particular taking, but the first 
a taking with an alternative. All natural causes select 
their ends in their effects. The magnet selects steel- 
filings from saw-dust ; the fire selects stubble from stones ; 
electricity selects metals from glass and resin ; and in 
all this taking to itself, these is no capacity to the alter- 
native. But election is the taking of one, when it might 
have been not the taking of that, but some other. No 
animal can do more than to select ; a spiritual being only 
can properly elect. With this apprehension of the mean- 
ing of terms, the definition of the human Will is a Capa- 
city for electing. 

In the more complete conception of this definition, the 
following considerations are all important. 

An act of will must have its end. — The capacity for 
willing can no more go out into act without an object, 
than can the capacities for knowing, or for feeling. 
Even the brute-will must have an end in acting, or it 
would involve the absurdity of executive action with 
nothing to execute. A rational spirit cannot originate an 
act without an end for the action, for an aimless action 
cannot be rational. We may as well eat with nothing to 
be eaten, as choose with nothing to be chosen. 

This end must have also an alternative in kind, and 
not merely in degree. — In order to all responsibility 
there must be avoidability, and every action is inevita- 
ble where no alternative is offered. With purely one 



256 THE WILL. 

object, the act is not that of election. The one object 
may present the alternatives to take, or not to take ; to 
take part, or all, etc. ; but to strictly one object, all alter 
is excluded. Nor can there be any proper alternative 
in the willing, except as the ends differ in their hind. 
One gold eagle and ten silver dollars present no alterna- 
tive in kind, for in pecuniary value they are the same. 
One gold eagle and five silver dollars give alternative 
only in degree, and as end in the will, this is no proper 
alternative. The sole end of acting being for pecuniary 
value, the action must be for the greater when to this 
only the less stands opposed. The part of the same 
thing is absorbed and lost in the whole, so far as all 
occasion for choice is given. 

To be an alternative in kind, there must be an end in 
the reason. — No matter how different may be the animal 
susceptibilities to be gratified, they offer no distinction in 
kind, but only in degree, as end of willing. The end, in 
both cases, is the gratification, and the two are really 
but one thing as motive to will, and that which is the 
greater has no alternative to it. Only as the prompt- 
ing of an animal susceptibility has set over against it the 
claim of a rational susceptibility, can there be any proper 
alternative in the human will. An occasion being given, 
for the origination of an act in the spirit that it may sup- 
press and control some lust of the animal, there is in this 
a full alternative in kind, and the fair occasion for an 
action in liberty. 

The animal may crave, but the spirit may see that the 
claims of taste forbid the gratification, and the end of 



THE COMPLETE CONCEPTION OF WILL. 257 

beauty in the reason may control the end of appetite in 
the animal. The artist may disdain to sell his product 
for any mercenary consideration. In the field of art is 
freedom, for the originations of the spirit can here coun- 
teract the clamors of appetite, and there is a fair alter- 
native. So also the claims of science may forbid the 
offered happiness, and the end of truth be an occasion 
for the spirit to originate an act that is to suppress the 
execution of animal desire. Some Galilleo may resolutely 
say of the earth, " but it does turn," though he die for 
it. Philosophy is thus free, for it puts a dignity in the 
spirit as alternative to any craving for happiness. But 
more especially, the moral claim may be an alternative 
to any other end of action. The self-knowledge of the 
reason — clearly apprehending the excellency of its own 
spirituality of being, and thus knowing what is due to 
itself as against happiness, or above the claims of art and 
science, and in this conviction of duty possessing a con- 
science — may give a spiritual origination that shall sup- 
press all action which is in conflict with right. And 
when this self-knowledge is also connected with the know- 
ledge of God, and the insight of the finite spirit deter- 
mines that its highest worthiness is in loving and adoring 
the Absolute Spirit, there is an alternative in man's 
religious being, which makes every action colliding with 
it to be thoroughly avoidable. 

In this complete conception of an end in the spirit, 
which may countercheck all ends in happiness, is there 
occasion for free, pure, spiritual origination of action. 
Not because an outer object appeals to appetite, and 

22* 



258 THE WILL. 

awakes a want, and thus impels to greatest happiness ; 
but solely because in the spirit's own being there is a 
claim for its own sake, and thus in itself alone originates 
the act, whose only end is that the spirit may be as 
worthy of all moral accepting as it is due to itself that it 
should be. The capacity to the alternative action is in 
the s^e/natural only. So far as nature reaches in man, 
all is without avoidability ; his spiritual being is capacity 
for true will in liberty. 



CHAPTER II, 



MAN EXERCISES SUCH CAPACITY OF WILL. 

In the foregoing Chapter, we have attained a completed 
conception of a will in liberty ; and now it is to be shown, 
that the human mind is endowed with such capacity, and 
that man actually so wills. It has already been made 
manifest that the human mind has susceptibility like the 
animal not only, but also that man's rational endowment 
capacitates him for feelings quite above, and other in 
kind than any animal can possess. Man is not left under 
the domination of appetite, with no alternative to the esti- 
mated highest happiness ; he has the interest of taste and 
science, and may free himself from the bondage of the 
animal in the open spheres of beauty and of truth. 

But quite above all, he is competent to know himself, 
and thus to find the rule within himself that determines 
the ground of his duty to himself, his fellows, and his 
God. In this moral imperative, there is attained the 
spring to a possible election of righteousness against any 
and all other interests. Taste or science may control 
happiness, and virtue or piety may control all. The 
spirit may keep all natural craving in subjection, and in 
the end of its own dignity in taste and philosophy, and 
more especially in ethics and religion, it can originate 
acts subjecting all of happiness to its own moral worth. 
All the elements, necessary to the capacity of a will in 



260 THE WILL. 

liberty, belong originally to the human mind. The evi- 
dence, that man puts in exercise such a capacity, is found 
in the following direct inferences from facts in conscious- 
ness, and is a direct fact in consciousness itself. 

1. Consciousness of personal responsibility can stand 
only in a capacity of will in liberty. — The conviction of 
personal responsibility for personal character and action 
is in every consciousness. Speculative theories and delu- 
sive conclusions may often beguile the logical judgment 
to deny such personal accountability, but no speculations 
of the logical understanding can make the reason to belie 
its own insight. The spirit knows what it behooves itself 
to do for its own worthiness 5 sake, and that it must take 
in its own being the dignity of its virtuous, or the infamy 
of its vicious action ; and while speculation may err, the 
conscience must hold true to its own claims. No man, 
in the honesty of his rational apprehension, ever doubted 
the fact of his moral accountability. The tribunal and 
the judge, the witness and the executioner, are all con- 
sciously within himself, and if he speculatively deny his 
God, he cannot dethrone the authority of his own reason. 
He must acquit or condemn himself, and be consciously 
elevated or degraded in his own eyes. 

But the consciousness is as clearly explicit, that for 
unavoidable results there can be no moral accountability. 
Power may crush in hopeless misery for actions that had 
no alternative, but no power can make the spirit see its 
own sin in that which it could not avoid, nor feel guilty 
desert for an act that could not have been otherwise. 
The soul goes quite back of all speculation on both sides, 



PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 261 

and not from any deductions in the understanding, but 
from an insight into its own being, decides that it is 
responsible for personal deeds, and is not responsible for 
anything that is not voluntarily in its own personality. 
Power has nothing to do with such convictions ; omnipo- 
tence itself, must go in accordance with them, and be 
judged conformably to them. Not arbitrary infliction, 
not even infallible testimony from another, can wake the 
feeling of responsibility in the spirit, except as that spirit 
is conscious of character and deeds of its own, which 
might have been avoided by it. A thousand liabilities 
to suffering there may be, which to the sufferer are 
wholly inevitable, but no such sufferings ever awoke the 
spirit to recognize any moral responsibilities. 

These conscious facts make the conclusion valid for a 
capacity of human election. Man knows himself respon- 
sible for his character and actions ; he knows himself not 
responsible for anything to him utterly inevitable ; he has 
thus both a character and a life, that lie wholly within 
the capacity of a will in liberty. 

2. The distinction between brute and human will is 
in this very point. — The animal is not rational spirit, and 
thus has no capacity for self-knowledge. To the brute 
there can be no insight of rights and claims due on its 
own account, and thus no moral rule to direct a moral life. 
There is no element of the ethical ; all is perpetually the 
natural only. Experience teaches it in many things 
its highest happiness, and hence the animal learns the 
law of prudence ; yea, experience sometimes teaches the 
animal what is kind, and so far the brute is pathologically 



262 THE WILL. 

benevolent ; but in all this, the animal never awakes to 
see the right, and feel the claim of moral obligation. 
The executive act goes out under the impulse of the 
strongest prompting, and appetite can be controlled only 
by arousing a stronger passion. Nothing can originate 
from within itself, but all the animal is, and does, has 
been determined for it in a previous condition. All is 
bound within the law of cause and effect in nature, and 
the brute can never lift itself above this bondage. There 
is no aspiration after freedom ; no dreaming of a spiritual 
world above the senses; but an entire resting in the 
gratification of its own appetites. Satisfy want, and the 
brute is contented ; the whole capacity is thereby filled ; 
and the stragglings of a free spirit to reach some higher 
station are never known. Its whole end is happiness, and 
there is no quickening spring to rise to moral worthiness. 
But from all this, man wholly differs. In his animal 
wants, he is like the brute, and prompted to highest 
gratification, and quiet when animal craving is satiated. 
But in his spiritual being there is that which no sensual 
gratification satisfies. Even as depraved, and the spirit 
basely subjected to the desires of the flesh, he knows 
that the claim is strong upon him, to crush his appetites 
in subordination to his rational worth, and restrain all 
their gratification by what is due to his spirit, and thus 
stand out again in all the dignity and manliness of a good 
will that masters passion. He cannot make himself to 
lie down at rest, with the brute, when animal craving is 
satisfied. There are the imperatives of conscience to 
fulfil ; the dignity and worth of moral character to sus- 



PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 263 

tain; the approbation of his own and other's spirit to 
secure; and though the means of fullest gratification 
were given, this cannot content him. There is a con- 
scious wrong to himself, a foul debasement and degrada- 
tion of his manliness, if the behests of his spirit are not 
recognized and asserted against all the clamors of sense. 
He cowers in secret beneath the reproaches of his own 
conscience, and stands self-abashed and speechless before 
the rebukes of his own spirit, and well knows that he can 
not hold up his head among his fellows, nor keep the 
blush of guilt from his face when alone, if he has sacri- 
ficed his loyalty to the right, and allowed gratified want 
to usurp the control of imperative duty. On the other 
hand, he knows that he can bear all suffering, and permit 
all that is animal within him to be crushed and die, and 
go to his spirit in its integrity for support : all of which 
no brute can recognize, and in which nothing that is 
animal can participate. There is, to man, an alternative 
to his whole animal nature, and that he should live under 
the law of highest happiness, like the brute, is clearly 
avoidable. He has a capacity of will hi liberty. 

3. It is only in this capacity of ivill in liberty, that 
man can discriminately determine what is personally his. 
All of man's constitutional being is conditioned in its own 
nature, and in the connections of surrounding nature ; 
and the supplied conditions bring the actions out with no 
alternatives. They really belong to nature, not to the 
man, except only as the onward causes in nature have 
wrought them out within the field of his consciousness, 
and made them necessarily to be a part of his patholo- 



264 THE WILL. 

gical experience. That I am hungry and desire food, 
or cold and weary and desire warmth and rest, are no 
acts in which my proper personality participates ; they 
are what nature is working in my constitution. Nature 
comes in and works upon me, and leaves its effects in my 
constitutional being, as the winds blow and the shadows 
pass oyer the landscape, and the sun shines and the 
showers fall upon it. These are not willed by me into 
act and being, and I never call them mine, as at all 
belonging to my proper personality All such events are 
linked into the connected successions of nature without 
an alternative, and the chain that they compose is a unit, 
whether the linked events be of matter or of mind. The 
tones have been struck upon me : they have not come 
up from the depths within me, and thus sounded through 
all my being as personal to me. In my constitutional 
nature, nothing is mine ; all is put there by another. I 
am never to value myself upon it, nor to charge myself 
with it. 

But, of all the originations of my spiritual activity, I 
am quite conscious that they sustain a very different 
relation to me. They are caused by me, and not merely 
caused in me ; they are the product of an election, and 
not an unavoidable coercion ; and I know them to be 
mine, in a sense that will not allow that they should so 
be appropriated to any other personality, human or divine. 
That ideal beauty ; that poem or song ; that completed 
system of science ; each belongs to its author, as neither 
can be owned by any other. My disposition ; my plan ; 
my habit ; my purpose ; these are wholly mine and not 



PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 265 

to be referred to nature, as is my hunger, my thirst, 
or any other appetite. And so, also, that assent to temp- 
tation ; that enticing allurement ; that dishonest transac- 
tion; that plan to defraud; that direct falsehood, of 
which I may be conscious in my own experience ; these 
have been wrought by me, and come back directly upon 
me, and fix themselves inalienably within me, and forever 
belong to me, and not to nature, nor to my neighbor, nor 
to God. They were avoidable by me, and yet originated 
from me, and belong solely to me. I alone, hi my own 
person, am responsible for them. And thus, too, that 
act of virtuous self-denial ; that fixed decision for the 
right ; that firm stand in duty ; these are mine, and no 
other personality in the universe, than me the doer, can 
feel any self-complacency in them. Influences from 
other quarters and agencies may have come upon me, 
which belong responsibly to their authors ; but these are 
products of my electing agency, and have originated in 
my capacity of will in liberty, and are thus my personal 
deeds exclusively. Only because of this capacity of will, 
can I detach what is mine from all else, and see myself 
and my deeds to stand out together, wholly discriminated 
from all other beings or facts in the universe. 

4. Reciprocal complacency in moral character stands 
wholly in this capacity of will in liberty, — Most animals 
are more or less gregarious, but their collection in flocks 
and herds is from constitutional propensities. The 
working of nature within them brings them together, 
and not that there is any reciprocal moral complacency 
between them. So, also, there are various associations 

23 



286 THE WILL. 

among men, which are induced by considerations of busi- 
ness, amusement or social enjoyment ; and indeed a large 
proportion of human attachments that go under the name 
of friendship, and even take on the form of conjugal con- 
nections, are based on no higher considerations than kin- 
dred pursuits, common interests, or congenial tempera- 
ment ; and in all such cases, the bonds that hold them 
together find all their strength in constitutional nature 
alone. They are merely joint-stock partners in attaining 
happiness ; held in connection only from the prudential 
consideration that they are useful to each other ; and 
they never rise to the elevation of that social communion, 
where the attachments are all induced and perpetuated 
by the reciprocal congenialities of moral character. 

But, one good man loves another, and all good men 
love God, from the congeniality of spiritual dispositions, 
and their reciprocal complacency is solely through the 
righteous character that each recognizes in the other. It 
is like communing with like, in free personality; and 
each heart beats in sympathy with the same ultimate 
moral rule, and glows with the same moral sentiments. 
Their spirits are all disposed to the same end, and thus 
the whole spiritual susceptibility, in each, is thoroughly 
congenial. They are kindred in spirit, and not merely 
held together as each can use the others for his highest 
happiness. 

God may be pleased with man in his constitutional 
being just as he is pleased with all the other works of 
his hand in nature, solely in the light of original adapta- 
tions, and as he sees man to be fitted to the uses designed ; 



PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 267 

and he may pronounce man on this account as he did 
nature at the beginning, to be " very good." And in the 
same way, man may be pleased with God ; and, viewing 
him merely as a means to be used for his own advantage, 
in that by him he gets propitious providences, fruitful 
seasons, a healthy body, and a happy heaven at last, man 
may say of God, in all the attributes which he cannot 
afford to lose, " very good ;" his omnipotence ; his wis- 
dom ; his foresight ; his steady arrangement of nature ; 
all " very good." What ends the man could not get, 
these attributes get for him ; and he cannot do without 
them. They are all put to an excellent use, in govern- 
ing the universe for man's happiness, and are just as 
much a greater good than the sunshine and the shower, 
as they subserve a more important end in gratifying 
human wants, and securing greater happiness. But in 
all this, there is no reciprocal complacency between God 
and man. Not thus does a good man love his God ; not 
thus does God love good men. There is a mutual 
delight, each in each, as objects of simple contemplation. 
An intrinsic excellency of moral character is seen, and 
on each side loved for what it is, and not for what it can 
be bartered away for. The whole spirituality of each 
person is fully set on righteousness, and for no selfish 
considerations will the good will turn from its steadfast- 
ness ; and in this solely is their communion, and not 
because they see that they are each necessary to the 
other's happiness. Take away from man the capacity of 
spiritual origination, in the election of highest worthiness 
above all happiness, and he can commune with his fel- 



268 THE WILL. 

lows only on the same basis as. the animals herd together; 
and God can have complacency in him, only as he is 
pleased with the adaptations and uses of nature. Reci- 
procal complacency in character can possibly stand in 
nothing else, than the free originations of congenial moral 
dispositions. 

5. Only in this capacity of ivill in liberty can the cur- 
rent of constitutional nature be resisted, — Constitutional 
nature works on, and I am hungry : in this condition I 
am conscious that the craving for food is unavoidable. 
I am weary; and in this condition I cannot exclude 
nature's desire for rest. Let only this prompting of the 
appetite be given, and there is no alternative to the exe- 
cutive act in gratification. Let only conflicting appetites 
crave, and there is no alternative to the act which goes 
out after what is deemed the highest gratification. A 
smaller amount of happiness can be no occasion for car- 
rying the executive action against a greater. A calcu- 
lation of consequences, and in this an attainment of the 
rule of prudence, can only appeal to a susceptibility for 
happiness, and whether considered as an aggregate of 
all susceptibilities, or as one generic susceptibility, the 
only occasion given is that for the simple estimate of 
higher and lower degrees. All is completely conditioned 
in constitutional nature, and my prudence is as much a 
pathological law as my hunger or my weariness. The 
stream is one, and as it floats me onward in the direction 
of greatest happiness, I can work the rudder against 
no counteracting force in the current that carries me. 
Nature is thoroughly all in and around me, and. I can 



PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 269 

seize upon nothing to steady myself against it, nor work 
my way upward in resistance to it. I myself am nature, 
and can only execute the promptings of my nature within 
me. 

But, I am conscious, in my spiritual being, of the pos- 
session of supernatural agency. "When appetite craves, 
in weaker or stronger measures, I can see in my spiritual 
being another law than highest happiness, and feel the 
claim of spiritual worthiness ; and I can put this over 
upon the weaker appetite against the stronger, or over 
against all appetite that is in collision with it, and I have 
in this an alternative, in kind, to all that nature may 
present ; and a spring to throw myself against nature, 
and work my way upward in resistance of it. The 
desires of the flesh may be aroused to their most passion- 
ate excitement, and all circumstances may favor the 
indulgence ; prudential considerations may seem to lie 
on the same side, and even the promptings of kindness 
may also concur ; and thus, the unbroken current of 
nature may tend towards gratification; but if I also see, 
that such indulgence would degrade and debase my 
spirit ; I shall, in this claim of my rational being, have 
a full alternative to all of nature's promptings. Let 
constitutional nature do her best, or her worst, I may 
still stand in my spiritual integrity, regardless of either 
the happiness or the suffering that weighs itself against 
duty. There is, in this capacity of the spirit, that which 
is out of and above nature ; a measure and a test for 
nature ; a determiner when gratification may be, and 
when it may not be, with honor to the soul ; and in the 

93* 



270 THE WILL. 

alternative of worthiness to happiness, thus opened, no 
alluring temptation from constitutional nature can ever 
come upon man, and be truly unavoidable. It is the 
right of the spirit to control and use the sense for its own 
highest excellency ; and it is due to itself to put the flesh 
to any sacrifice and endurance which may preserve or 
exalt its own true dignity ; and thus in its own behoof, 
the spirit may contemn all enjoyment, and all suffering, 
that nature can give. 

6. Individual consciousness is clear for this capacity 
of ivill in liberty. — We do not say that any man is con- 
scious of " the power of contrary choice," as it is called, 
in the sense that he can take a less degree of happiness 
when only a greater degree stands over against it. If 
only happiness appeals to a susceptibility, all conscious- 
ness is, that the greater must be taken ; for there is 
literally no reason for anything else, and thus no alterna- 
tive. But in all men there is a deep consciousness that, 
somehow, there is an alternative to present disposition 
-and character, and thus an avoidability in all voluntary 
action. They may not be able to analyze the fact, so 
that they can represent it clearly in its conception to 
themselves, or to others ; but they all know, that there 
is responsibility for their radical disposition of soul, and 
thus that its disposing is not without its alternative. It 
is not all the freedom a wicked man is conscious of, that 
"he may change his action if he please. That pleasing is 
in his spiritual, and not in any constitutional disposition : 
and he knows the bond is on him that he please to change ; 
.and that his sin is in this very disposition which is not 



PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 271 

pleased to change ; and that, in this responsibility of dis- 
position, the present evil one is avoidable. This fact 
may be made to stand out more perspicuous, by a com- 
parison with other activities. 

The Intellectual Capacity is consciously without any 
alternatives in its activity. In all conditions of knowing, 
the knowledge must be as it is, in the given condition. 
When the occasion is given for perceiving a house, there 
is not the alternative for perceiving, not it but, a tree. 
To the intellect, in that condition, the perception of the 
house, and just that specific house, is unavoidable. So 
in the concluding in a judgment ; with the conditioned 
facts, the specific judgment must be as it is. We can 
not say we can change the knowledge if we please ; for 
our pleasure has no control over it. All is determined 
in nature, and not at all in any spiritual disposition. So, 
also, is the constitutional susceptibility without any alter- 
native, in its activity. When nature makes me cold, I 
cannot change the feeling to warmth ; nor can I repress 
the desire to be warm ; and when I hear that my brother 
is sick, I cannot change the feeling to that which is 
induced when I hear he is in good health. The feeling 
is determined in the condition ; and all men are quite 
conscious, that, in order to change the feeling, there must 
be a change of conditions. To the constitutional suscep- 
tibility, all its activity is without an alternative ; and 
every specific feeling is, in its given condition, wholly 
unavoidable. Not if we please, can we here feel differ- 
ently, for all these feelings are wholly in nature, and not 
at all in a spiritual disposition. 



272 THE WILL. 

But when I bring my capacity of will within the light 
of consciousness, I know that in precisely this point there 
is a wide distinction. I feel that my act of will was not 
bound, in its given conditions, without an alternative. I 
know that I could have done differently, if I had pleased ; 
and I know, moreover, that if I was pleased to do wrong, 
that pleasing to so do was not inevitable. It was not 
determined in the conditions of nature, but wholly in my 
spiritual disposition ; and to that, there was a full alter- 
native. My spirit was bound, by the conscious claims 
of its own true dignity, to dispose its entire activity to a 
different end ; and I am fully conscious that the way was 
open to it, though it did not take it. The question of 
the certainty of fact in liberty will hereafter be investi- 
gated, but now the only question is of conscious avoida- 
bility ; and we have only to mark the conscious contrast, 
in this point, between the acts of the intellect and the 
acts of the constitutional susceptibility, and those of the 
will, and we find a clear decision. The last is with an 
alternative, and consciously avoidable ; the two former, 
we know, are conditioned in nature. 

7. Universal consciousness, — There is a full opportu- 
nity to appeal to universal consciousness, on the question 
of capacity for election, or of will in liberty. And this 
is affirmed, notwithstanding the fact that the speculations 
of the logical understanding must conclude against it. 
The operation of the understanding must be wholly within 
nature, and can possibly have no recognition of a super- 
natural. It can only connect conceptions, and can never 
comprehend the process, in an absolute beginning and 



PKOOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 273 

end. Thus, to the logical understanding, there can be 
only the conditioned, and never an absolute. There may 
be one circle enclosing all that has yet been, but not one 
that is absolute for all that can be. There may be a 
mounting up from effect to cause indefinitely, but not to 
an absolute first; for the understanding can only con- 
nect, and in its highest cause is still obliged to conceive 
of something higher that conditions it. The great first 
cause, to the logical understanding, has still its imposed 
conditions within itself, and can develop its activity in 
only one way. It is as much nature as any succeeding 
cause, only that it is assumed to be a first one. But 
common consciousness has always testified to the convic- 
tion that there is an absolute first cause, though the 
understanding can never find it, nor even have a con- 
ception of it. 

Even so with liberty. The logical understanding can 
neither find it, nor get a conception of it. Absolute 
origination is to this faculty an absurdity. The origi- 
nator finds already within himself that which conditions 
his products, and he can choose only as he finds himself 
pleased to choose, but can make no alternative to this 
pleasing. He finds his disposition already within him, 
and does not himself originate it. The conception of his 
changing his disposition would involve a previous pleasing 
to do so, and conditioned in this, a choosing to do so ; and 
thus, endlessly, the choice must be conditioned already 
in some preceding given disposition. So, we say, the 
logical understanding must go. It is faculty for con- 
necting, and not beginning ; for conditioned producing, 



274 THE WILL. 

and not absolutely originating ; for knowing nature, and 
not at all the supernatural ; and if we have no higher 
faculty, we cannot possibly conceive of a God, whose 
disposition is in any other sense his, than that he finds it 
already originated in him ; and then, that this determines 
all his acts of election, without alternative or avoidability. 
Nature itself thus runs upward through all the activity 
of the Deity, and both the finding, and the conceiving, 
of an originating will in liberty is an impossibility, and an 
absurdity. But the common consciousness never acqui- 
esced in these speculative conclusions of a logical under- 
standing. Universally, the common mind has recognized 
a God, whose disposing of his whole spiritual activity was 
his own, and not that he found it already disposed, and 
must condition all his choices by it. Though they may 
not have discriminated between the faculties of the under- 
standing, which must have its media for connecting, and 
that of the reason, which has its compass for compre- 
hending ; yet, have they always testified to the convic- 
tions of the latter, against the speculative conclusions of 
the former. ISTo thoroughly labored system of a will, 
conditioned in its antecedent grounds of preference, has 
ever satisfied the common conviction. That has always 
mounted to the source of all pleasing and preference ; to 
the radical disposition itself; and affirmed that this was 
at the man's responsibility, and that it had ever its alter- 
native. All human language, all legislation, all the 
history of man, speaks out what mankind in all ages 
have consciously felt, an alternative and avoidability to 
their inmost disposition. 



PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 275 

The speculation of the understanding may at any time 
be counteracted, anct corrected in the insight of the rea- 
son. While the understanding always finds a law im- 
posed upon, the reason sees one inherent in, the agent. 
One holds to an end without an alternative, and is phy- 
sical law ; the other binds by the imperative of duty, 
admitting an alternative, and is ethical law. When the 
fact is clearly apprehended, that the spirit of man has 
the prerogative, which the animal nature has not, of 
knowing itself and its intrinsic excellency, and thus read- 
ing its duty in what is due in its own right, there is in this 
seen a full occasion for its own disposing of its activity, 
and not waiting for highest gratified want to determine 
it. There is capacity for originating an act in the end 
of its own worthiness, and for electing between this and 
any gratified want that may come in competition with 
this. And even, when a perverse disposing of itself has 
been effected, and a sinful and depraved disposition con- 
tracted; the conscious claim, of what is due to the spirit 
in its own right, has not ceased to press, and the alterna- 
tive is open, however it may be certain as a fact that it 
will not be taken, for the spirit to break from its bondage 
and obey the imperative to secure its highest worthiness. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE ACTS OF THE WILL FROM 
ALL OTHER MENTAL FACTS. 

In the attainment of the complete conception of a Toll in 
liberty, we are prepared to make an accurate discrimi- 
nation between its acts and all other mental phenomena ; 
and such discrimination is necessary to a correct psycho- 
logy. A self-active being, which has its law within it, 
and not imposed upon it, must go out in its activity as no 
other agency can ; its acts are its own originations, and 
not productions from it by an outer causality working upon 
it. When put forth there was an alternative, and thus 
an avoidability, and these are characteristics of all acts 
of will exclusively. In most cases, the acts of the will 
are readily distinguished from other mental facts. Intel- 
lectual acts are not liable to be confounded with volun- 
tary acts ; knowing is so little similar to willing, that 
cognitions never become mistaken for volitions. But 
other mental activities are sometimes misapprehended as 
from the will, and not unfrequently common speech con- 
fuses both volitions and other actions under the same 
word. We will notice some particulars in their order. 

Section I. Simple spontaneity is sometimes 
ndei) with will. — Spirit is inherently self-: 
tive, and in given occasions goes out towards its ends 



THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE ACTS OF WILL. 277 

spontaneously. We have already attained a number of 
such facts of simple spontaneity, as in the production of 
the General States of mind. The self-agency, on occa- 
sion given, goes of its own accord into the intellectual, 
emotive, or willing states ; and though the occasion for 
this may sometimes be that the will is exerted, yet, as in 
memory, this willing is not directly in the production of 
the fact, but rather the putting of the mind in a fitting 
occasion for it. The remembering is not itself a volition, 
nor is the general state of either the knowing, feeling or 
willing, a volition, but is a spontaneous movement of the 
mind into the given state, as capacity to know, feel, or 
will. 

And, here we observe, that such spontaneous outgo- 
ings of mind are sometimes mistaken for volitions, espe- 
cially if they occur on occasion of their being consciously 
wished for. Such has been more particularly confounded 
with volition, in the facts of observation and attention. 
Cousin directly ascribes attention to the will, and makes 
it evidential of personality. But the thorough analysis T 
which attains to what an act of attention specifically is, 
will at once determine its purely spontaneous, and not 
voluntary origin. When a discriminated sensation is 
given, the operation of constructing or defining it, so as 
to give its exact limits in either space^ time or degree, is 
of the intellect and not of the will. The will may be an 
occasion for it or not ; but in any way, the intellectual 
movement, which limits and thus gives form to that which 
is in the sensation, is purely spontaneous and not willed 
directly. It is often quite beyond the reach of the will, 

24 



278 THE WILL. 

inasmuch as the will sometimes cannot prevent its being 
done, and at others cannot secure its being done. I may 
wish to construct an object, but cannot ; and I may wish 
not to have it definite, but there it is, in full form before 
me. 

And precisely so, of an act of observation. I may 
wish to get an object distinct and cannot, or may* wish 
not to have it distinct and cannot help it. Neither obser- 
vation nor attention are of the will, but from mere mental 
spontaneity. The difference is in this ; all acts of spiritual 
will in liberty must come within an alternative of worthi- 
ness and opposing gratification, and constitute an election; 
but pure spontaneity has no alternatives of imperative 
and appetitive, and merely a simple ultro-motivity to its 
object. 

Section II. The mere executive of appetite is 
often mistaken for will. — When animal susceptibility 
is excited, and the act goes out in attainment of the object 
for gratification, it is often spoken of as choice, and con- 
sidered as truly an act of will. Indeed, with most, as a 
speculative conception, no other apprehension of will is 
attained. It is not apprehended but that the brute has 
as complete a will in liberty, and as truly an election, as 
man. A choice between degrees of happiness is no pro- 
per election, inasmuch as no true alternative is presented : 
the taking of the highest degree is unavoidable ; and this 
is all of will that any animal nature can know. When, 
in any way, the conception of will is confined to the exe- 
cuting of some anterior pleasing, and thus unavoidably 



THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE ACTS OF WILL. 279 

conditioned by it, such conception is incomplete and erro- 
neous in its deficiency, and amounts to no more than 
mere brute-will. It is wholly in nature, and one of the 
conditioned links in its chain of causes and effects, and 
it does by no means take it out of this chain, to call it 
by the names of morality or spirituality. Its conditions 
are not reasons, for it has no rationality. It knows no 
self-law in the light of its own excellency, and thus no 
reason why it should not float on in nature's strongest 
current. 

When I am hungry, or thirsty, and nothing but grati- 
fication is the condition for acting, I shall both eat and 
drink, and of that which will gratify my hunger and thirst 
the most; and the brute will do the same. If some 
greater happiness is to be secured, or danger avoided, 
by not eating ; the prudential appeal will be the strong- 
est, and I shall yet restrain my appetite ; and the brute 
will do the same. There is in this no proper self-denial, 
but a real self-indulgence ; I am gratifying my strongest 
appetite. There is no election in the case, but an action 
unavoidably conditioned. But hungry and thirsty as I 
may be, and prudential in highest happiness as a' given 
gratification may be, and I possess also spiritual, rational 
existence, that sees in my own excellence of being what 
is worthy of me, and as such rational spirit, I hear the 
command from the absolute, " whether ye eat or drink, 
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God ;" I shall 
in this have a reason for denying appetite, and discarding 
prudential highest happiness, which no animal may ever 
know. Not at all the awakening another and higher 



280 THE WILL. 

prudential want, in the eternal happiness or suffering that 
governmental retribution discloses ; but the opening of 
my spiritual eye upon the guilt, and the debasement 
which disobedience to God will fix in my consciousness. 
That I shall thus make the spirit unworthy, is sufficient 
occasion for an alternative countercheck to the act that 
would make the appetite happy. The certainty which 
will be taken is no matter of consideration here ; let that 
question be as it may, an alternative of kind, and not 
merely in degree, is here opened, and a proper election 
occurs, whether the act in certainty go out for sensual 
gratification, or for spiritual worthiness in seeking God's 
glory. In neither case was the act unavoidable. The 
man can stand here and elect ; no animal can reach this 
station. The brute must execute the conditions of his 
nature, for to the brute there is no supernatural reason 
to take hold upon, whereby it may resist and overcome 
nature. We may call the animal executive a will, but it 
is a long way distant from a spiritual will in liberty. 

Section III. Will and desire are not infre- 
quently confounded. — Desire is the mere craving of 
the animal susceptibility directed towards its object of 
gratification, and is thus the occasion for an executive 
act to go forth in attainment. The executive act, we 
have already seen, is not from a proper will, much less 
then can the mere craving which prompts it be an act of 
will, and yet often is the mere desire taken as a volition. 
Indeed, in common speech, the word desire is sometimes 
put for will, and the word will is sometimes used for a 



THE DISCRIMINATION OP THE ACTS OF WILL. 281 

mere desire. The two facts widely differ, and a correct 
psychology demands a clear discrimination, and no equi- 
vocal terms should be allowed to confound distinct things. 

In the following examples, we have the word will put 
for desire. " Not my willy but thine be done."— Luke, 
xxii, 42. This is the memorable prayer of Jesus to the 
Father, in the hour of his agony in the garden. Should 
we take the word will here for a proper election, we 
should have not only the impiety of a will in Christ 
opposed to the will of the Father, but also the absurdity 
of a will opposed to itself. The prayer expresses Christ's 
real will, and yet it is that his will may not be done. 
Manifestly, the will here is desire, the mere craving of 
the animal susceptibiliy. Christ, as human, had truly 
the animal nature, and this reluctated all suffering and 
he desired to escape it. But the will in the prayer is, 
that the Father would disregard the desire of the flesh, 
and carry out in him his own desired ends of human 
redemption. The same changed use of the term occurs 
in Lam. iii, 33. " For he doth not willingly afflict nor 
grieve the children of men." Speaking after the manner 
of men, it is not a congenial feeling, as desire, to afflict 
mankind ; but superior considerations induce the purpose^ 
as will, to do so. So also it is said of God, " Who will 
have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge 
of the truth."— 1 Tim. ii, 4. 

Again, we have the word desire put for will in the fol- 
lowing examples. " They desired Pilate, that he (Christ) 
should be put to death." — Acts, xiii, 28. " And he (the 
Ethiopian eunuch) desired Philip that he would come up 

24* 



282 THE WILL. 

and sit with him." — Acts, viii, 31. " One of the Phari- 
sees desired him, (Christ) that he would eat with him." 
— Luke, vii, 36. " Then Daniel went in and desired of 
the king," etc. — Dan. ii, 16. In all these cases there is 
more than a feeling in the susceptibility ; a craving for 
an end ; there is truly an election, as will. 

The appetitive craving is one thing; the electing its 
gratification is quite another; and no matter how common 
speech may interchange words, philosophy must accu- 
rately discriminate facts. 

Section IV. The spiritual affections may 
sometimes be conceived as volitions. — We are held 
responsible for our sentiments. Our spiritual feelings 
are the subject of commands, and come within the reach 
of legal retributions. Love and hatred, joy and sorrow, 
in the sense of spiritual affections, are enjoined upon us 
in reference to certain objects. This may very readily 
induce the conviction that they are themselves volitions. 
But their distinction from all direct acts of the will is 
manifest in the utter impracticability to immediately will 
them in or out of being. In a given condition, no act of 
the will can secure them ; and in another condition, no 
act of the will can exclude them. In one disposition of 
spirit, I cannot will love to the right and sorrow for sin 
into exercise ; and in another disposition, I cannot will 
them out of exercise. There is a susceptibility to feeling 
that takes its rise, and is altogether determined, in the 
spiritual disposition ; hence we have termed it the spirit- 
ual susceptibility. Its exercises are properly feelings, 



THE DISCRIMINATION OF THE ACTS OF WILL. 283 

affections, not at all volitions. The election is altogether 
in reference to the spiritual disposing, and not at all to 
the susceptibility and its feelings when the disposition 
has been taken. It is only because the disposition has 
its alternative and is avoidable, that the man is respon- 
sible for the affections which are conditioned in it. The 
disposition may be termed a state of will, but the affec- 
tions are the exercises of the spiritual susceptibility. 

In all cases, an open alternative, and thus an avoida- 
bility, will characterize all acts that are properly of the 
human will, and this will discriminate them from all other 
mental facts. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE ACTS OF WILL. 

The will, as capacity, is the power of election, and thus an 
avoidability in the origination of the act will characterize 
every proper volition; yet, in other respects, the acts of 
the will may have permanent distinctions among them- 
selves, and there are many advantages from having them 
classified according to their inherent peculiarities. One 
great benefit from it is a clearer apprehension of the point 
of responsibility, and of the fountain of moral character. 

Section I. Immanent preference. — Preference is 
an actual putting of one thing before or above others, 
and this may be done in the spirit's own action, without 
any overt manifestation of it, and as thus lying hid in the 
mind may be termed an immanent preference. An act 
of the judgment may decide which of two sources of 
happiness is the greatest in degree, and of worthiness 
and happiness which is the highest good in kind, but 
such distinction of estimate in the judgment is not a 
preference. And so also one desire may go out towards 
its object more intensely than another, or one impera- 
tive may awaken a deeper sentiment of obligation than 
another ; but no difference in degrees of awakened sus- 
ceptibility should be termed a preference. There must 
be a proper election, a voluntary setting of one before 



THE ACTS OF WILL CLASSIFIED. 285 

others, or it is not a proper act of preference. Want of 
occasion, or countervailing circumstances, may preclude 
this preference from manifesting itself anywhere on the 
theater of active life, and thus the act of preferring never 
pass over from the mind ; yea, the intention through all 
the duration of the preference may be, that it shall never 
come out in open action ; yet is there in it a real commit- 
ment of the spirit to the end preferred, and such inward 
election is a personal willing, which to the eye that 
searches the heart has its proper moral character. It is 
fully within the person's own consciousness, and the con- 
science accuses or excuses accordingly. 

As examples for illustration, there may be mentioned 
the declaration of the Savior, "Whoso looketh on a 
woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery already 
with her in his heart."— Math, v, 28. " Whoso hateth 
his brother is a murderer." — 1 John, iii, 15. And quite 
prominently, the tenth commandment — " Thou shalt not 
covet," etc. — Ex. xx, 17. In a good sense we find this 
immanent preference in the case of David, who would 
have built a temple for the Lord, but was prevented 
because as a warrior he had shed much human blood. 
" It was in thine heart to build an house to my name, thou 
didst well that it was in thine heart." — 1 Kings, viii, 18. 
As a general application on both sides, good and bad, we 
have Solomon's declaration of man, "As he thinketh in 
his heart, so is he." — Prov. xxiii, 7. This thinking in 
heart is a real electing purpose. 

The immanent preference of objects and ends must 
widely affect the entire personal character, though the 



286 THE WILL. 

action towards the object externally be always restrained. 
The whole inner experience of the man is modified by 
it, and all his habits of meditation and silent reflection 
become tinged with the color of his secret preferences. 
It is easy to see what was the inward preference of 
David, when he said of the Lord, "Whom have I in 
heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth that 
I desire beside thee." — Ps. lxxiii, 25. And while this 
induced pious meditations on his bed in the night-watches, 
the effect upon his entire character would be in strong 
contrast to the impure and debasing thoughts springing 
from the immanent preferences of the sensualist. The 
inward influence must soon so far affect the whole man, 
that the outward life will be colored by it, through all its 
communion and conversation, though the specific prefer- 
ences be still restrained to the heart. 

Section II. Governing purpose. — The spiritual 
activity may dispose itself towards an end, that may 
demand many supplementary acts before it can be 
attained ; in such a case the general election of the end 
is a purpose, and inasmuch as it prompts the executive 
acts and guides and directs them to its own issues, it is 
properly termed a governing purpose. The executive 
acts are solely that the general purpose may be effected* 
Such governing purpose may be more or less comprehen- 
sive, proportioned to the number and complication of the 
means and agencies used to complete the end, and so far 
as it reaches it governs the process and is, to that extent, 
a governing purpose. A purpose to visit a distant place 



THE ACTS OF WILL CLASSIFIED. 287 

will govern all the actions necessary in preparation for, 
and prosecution of the journey ; but such a purpose will 
not be so comprehensive nor engrossing as that which 
fixes upon the main end in life. 

The governing purpose has this peculiarity, that it is 
continuous and prolonged through all the process to the 
consummation. An act of election is at once, and may 
wholly cease in its instantaneous energizing, and in this 
point of view volitions are transient and fleeting; but 
when the election has been of an end that is to be attained 
only through a long succession of activities, the electing 
act does not die in its outgoing, but the spirit fixes itself 
upon its object and remains in a state of energizing 
towards it. That it has taken its distant end removes 
all the uneasiness of hesitation and suspense, and there 
is no farther place for choice, since the mind is already 
made up ; but the action, as will, has not terminated in 
the choosing ; it flows on in a perpetuated current towards 
its object, and the spirit may be said to be in a perma- 
nent state of will for the accomplishment of that end. 
A purpose is thus a perpetuated will from an election. 
A person may not always retain the consciousness of 
having made the distinct and deliberate election ; nor 
indeed, be conscious how deep and strong the current of 
his purpose has become. An absorption of all the mental 
energy may already be in a purpose to acquire and amass 
riches, and yet the distinct election of such an end may 
have no place in the memory ; and the purpose itself 
may have strengthened so insidiously, that the man has 
no conception what a very miser he has become ; but 



288 THE WILL. 

there needs only to be suddenly interposed some threat- 
ened danger to his wealth, or some obstacle to any 
farther gains, and at once the perturbed spirit manifests 
the intensity of its avarice. His will has yielded to 
passion so readily, that it has not known the strength of 
its bondage. 

As the governing purpose is enlarged in the compre- 
hensiveness of its end, and the control it holds over all 
the mental energies, it comes to be known as a perma- 
nent disposition, and while a fixed and comprehensive 
purpose in business would not be termed the man's dis- 
position, yet when found so engrossing as to merge all 
else in the end of getting and of hoarding money, we 
should not hesitate to say of such a purpose, that it is 
the man's disposition. It goes so far, and is so controll- 
ing, that it gives character to the man. When we have 
an end so comprehensive that it includes all the action, 
and controls ail the mental energy, we have in this the 
radical disposition, and thus the true moral character of 
the man. If the spirit is disposed towards happiness as 
its chief good, and puts that as end to the exclusion of 
its own worthiness, it has become radically and thoroughly 
depraved, and its disposition is totally sinful. If, on the 
other hand, the end of the spirit is the attaining and keep- 
ing its worthiness of its own and other spirit's approba- 
tion, and is denying every conflicting appetite for it ; so 
far as such a disposition supremely controls, it is right- 
eous, and the moral character is pure and virtuous. Out 
of this radical disposition springs the spiritual suscepti- 



THE ACTS OF WILL CLASSIFIED. 289 

bility, or heart, of the man, from which flows all pure 
or depraved affections. 

The governing purpose is, in this way, distinguished 
from all the choices or volitions that are subordinate to 
it. They exist for it, and find their whole determination 
in it. They may change according to circumstances, 
and often the good and the bad man's end may induce 
to the same outward action. A wordly end may some- 
times be best attained by putting on the semblance, and 
performing the ceremonials, of piety ; but the character 
of the subordinate act is to be estimated, not from the 
outward seeming, but solely from the governing purpose 
which it is designed to execute. The radical character 
can be changed by no change in the choices and voli- 
tions of the man, but only in a change of the radical 
spiritual disposition. 

Section III. Desultory volition. — An election 
of some comprehensive end may have induced a perma- 
nent state of will in a governing purpose, and this may 
still continue unrenounced and unchanged, and yet this 
governing purpose may not be so energetic as to preclude 
the sudden and strong awakening of some constitutional 
susceptibility, to carry out an executive act in gratificar 
tion of it, against the direction of the governing purpose. 
Such turning aside from the main end, while the govern- 
ing purpose towards it is not renounced, is what has been 
termed above a desultory volition. Observation and 
experience constantly give such facts, where a passionate 
impulse comes suddenly and strongly in, and the action 

25 



290 THE WILL. 

for a time is carried away from the main object before 
this counter-impulse of sudden feeling. But inasmuch 
as the governing purpose which it thus counterworks has 
not been discarded, the desultory impulse must at length 
subside, and the old unrenounced purpose again bear 
sway. The passion is satiated and subsides, reflection 
retains, and the main end again comes in clear view, and 
the governing purpose controls the subordinate acts again 
for its attainment. The man chides himself for his folly 
and weakness, and hastens on more determinately towards 
the predominant object. 

A familiar illustration of the intrusion of a desultory 
volition will make the conception distinct. I learn that 
a dear friend is dangerously sick in a distant city, and I 
take the purpose to visit him. This controls all my voli- 
tions in arranging for the journey, and from the start, 
onward for several days travel towards the place. Then 
an intensely interesting incident suddenly occurs, and 
my feelings are at once powerfully excited and attention 
absorbed by a surprising curiosity, or convivial opportu- 
nity, or chance for pecuniary speculation : and I give 
way to this desultory impulse and lose sight of my mam 
end for some hours. But at length this impulse becomes 
exhausted ; the main end and purpose of my journey 
comes vividly up ; and conscious that they have never 
been renounced, though inexcusably suspended, I hasten 
on to the prosecution of my intention : reproaching 
myself for my weakness, and fearing that all may now 
be in vain, and that during my delay my friend may have 
died. And so once more, where the governing purpose 



THE ACTS OF WILL CLASSIFIED. 291 

rises to a permanent disposition, — an exceedingly avarL 
cious man may be taken as an example, whose purpose 
fixed on gain may have made him a very miser in all his 
feelings and habits. There may suddenly come to him 
an appeal, from some interesting sufferer, that shall rouse 
his pity, and induce the gift of some of his idolized gold 
in relief of this deep distress. But his governing dispo- 
sition has not at all been changed in the intrusion of such 
a desultory volition, and very probably, in a few hours, 
all this constitutional sympathy will have passed away, 
and he be chiding himself as a fool for his weakness, and 
more firmly resolving not again to be so overcome as thus 
to be cheated of the object of his ruling passion. 

The real character of the man is in his radical disposi- 
tion, and if this is not changed, no desultory acts affect 
his true character. A good man may have sudden and 
strong temptations, in appeals to constitutional appetite, 
and the impulse bear him away in sinful action ; but if 
the good disposition has not been renounced, the tempt- 
ing influence will at length fade, and the man come back 
from his fall with bitter tears and self-reproaches; a 
repenting backslider, but not a deliberate apostate. 
Against both a bad and a good governing purpose, such 
sudden impulses may induce desultory volitions, which 
are quite in contradiction to the main direction of the 
spirit, but we are not to estimate the man's proper cha- 
racter by them. If the bad man do a good deed, only 
through the impulse of constitutional feeling, all we can 
say in his favor is, that his depraved disposition was not 
too strong for some transient traits of humanity ; and 



292 THE WILL. 

when a good man so does a bad deed, lie is a sinner in 
that act, and should feel debased and humbled by it, and 
repent of it ; but the real character of neither the bad 
nor the good man was in this way at all changed. The 
strength of character is in the decision and firmness of 
the radical disposition, and to be perfect, this should be 
so strong in the right that all desultory impulses should 
be resisted ; but no man is safe in supposing, and no man 
can at any time be conscious, that his governing purpose 
is so strong, that all desultory volitions against it shall 
forever be excluded. 



FOURTH DIVISION. 



THE COMPETENCY OF THE HUMAN MIND TO ATTAIN 
THE END OF ITS BEING, 



GENERAL REMARKS ON THE TRUE END OF THE HUMAN 

MIND. 

We have now attained the facts, general and particular, 
of the human mind, and their classification in an orderly 
system, according to the testimony of universal conscious- 
ness ; and have thus the conception of the human mind as 
a whole, and may thence determine what it is competent to 
execute. This is of much importance in many directions. 
All systems of education, and more or less all questions 
of responsibility in morals and religion, must be deter- 
mined from the true view of the capabilities of the mind 
in its varied faculties. Merely to know what mind is, 
ought not to be the conclusion of our psychology. Tak- 
ing it as it is, what is designed to be attained by it? and 
how competent is it to fulfil such design ? These are 
enquiries yet to be prosecuted and settled. A farther 
reference to human consciousness, a careful observation 

25* 



294 THE COMPETENCY OP MIND TO ITS ENl>. 

of the facts which come within human experience, and 
fair deductions from all facts which have been above 
attained, are the sources from whence our answers must 
be derived. 

The end of the human mind is its own perfection. 
Every claim that can come upon it, and every righteous 
wish that can be held for it, is fully satisfied, when every 
faculty is working completely according to the law of its 
adaptation in its place in the whole mind. When intel- 
lect, susceptibility, and will are in complete conformity 
to the summum bonum, the highest good of the man, 
then is the great end for which the human mind exists 
consummated. It may thus hold on its way in eternity, 
and in its action every faculty augment in energy, and 
thus the whole mind rise in efficiency and inherent dignity 
indefinitely ; but at any one point in such perpetual pro- 
gress, this conforming activity in the whole mind to ths 
highest good is then and there in its consummated 
degree, and a higher could not have been attained at 
that point, and only by passing through it and beyond it 
What then is the highest good, to which the action of 
every faculty must be held conformable ? This can be 
conclusively answered from the data already found in the 
conscious facts of the human mind. 

The highest good of the animal portion of our nature 
is the gratification of its highest wants. An immediate 
gratification of a present want may be far counterbal- 
anced by a present denial, and attaining the coming 
gratification of a future greater want. The perfection 
of the animal would thus be found, in the cultivation of 



THE TRUE END LOST. 295 

the sense to perceive, and of the understanding to judge, 
the most accurately in reference to such objects and such 
constitutional susceptibilities as, when brought together, 
shall secure the greatest gratification. Such estimation 
of greatest happiness would induce the strongest craving 
want, and this would direct the executive agency accord- 
ingly, and the consummation of animal being would be 
found in the waiting for, and finally attaining, that highest 
happiness. It might so be found, that in the long run 
of experience, the gratification of kindness or benevolence 
would give decidedly the greatest happiness, and then 
this would be the greatest want and control the activity 
which must energize to satisfy it. It would be prudent 
to be kind ; and the perfection of the animal is in know- 
ing it, and feeling the strongest craving for the happiness 
of kind action, and thus doing and enjoying it. Its 
highest good is highest happiness, and its perfection is in 
knowing where to find it, and then it must go out con- 
formably to get it. The mere animal can propose to 
itself no higher end, nor by any action reach a higher 
consummation. 

But the spiritual in man can see an intrinsic excellency 
and dignity in spiritual being itself, which will not allow 
that any want shall stand in competition with its own 
worth. It can see its relationship to the animal, and 
that this, with all its wants, must be subservient to it, and 
not it to the wants of the animal. It can see its rela- 
tionship to other spirits, and that in the excellency and 
dignity of their spiritual being, they have rights and 
claims upon itself. But no such relationship, either to 



296 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

the animal or to the spiritual, can be an ultimate ground 
in which the man can find his highest good, but solely 
in this, that in all relationships he has looked to the law 
written in his own spiritual being, and conformed to the 
claim of its worthiness. Other spirits, God, and God's 
revealed law, all stand in a certain relationship to him ; 
but the last and highest question is taken to his own soul — 
how, in this relationship to other spirits, and to God, and 
to God's revealed law, shall I so stand as to make my own 
spirit the most worthy of its own approbation ? No other 
spirit, and no legislating sovereign, can approve of my 
spirit, if it has not sacredly and solely done that, and 
been that, which made it the most worthy of its own 
acceptance. Not that somehow I shall get, or God may 
give me, greater happiness for it; for if I have looked at 
the happiness as end, I shall have in that said, that my 
worthiness is nothing but a means to happiness, and that 
if I can barter it away for greater happiness, or get the 
happiness as well by something else, then my worthiness 
of spirit is nothing to me. That I may see myself to be 
worthy of my own spiritual approbation is my highest good, 
and I shall know that God and good angels can approve, 
only when my whole activity is in conformity to it. In 
this is conscience ; an insight into my own spiritual being ; 
knowing my ultimate rule in connection with the very 
fact of knowing myself. The susceptibility awakened by 
the knowing of this rule of right, is the source of all feel- 
ing of obligation, and is wholly in the spiritual man and 
can never be induced in the animal constitution. The 
feeling of obligation, thus induced, was designed to con- 



THE TRUE END LOST. 297 

trol in opposition to all other feelings whatsoever, inas- 
much as the gratification of any and all other interest, in 
conflict with this, would compel self-reproach, for which 
no possible gratification in happiness could compensate. 
To know myself to be worthy of my spiritual approba- 
tion is my highest good, and to be and remain so is my 
highest end. 

This cannot be effected in any succession of specific 
volitions, for such particular volitions must be in execu- 
tion of some general purpose terminating in a final result, 
which gives its character to the general purpose, and 
through that also to all the subordinate volitions. The 
supreme controlling purpose must then be found, which 
holds sway over all the volitions of life. This is only 
reached in the radical spiritual disposition ; the bent of 
the spirit itself, as it goes out in its spontaneous activity. 
The man can be worthy, and thus attain his highest good, 
only in the possession of a radical spiritual disposition 
fixed in conformity to the claims of his own excellency. 
He obeys neither man nor God, ethically, except as he 
directly sees that the proper dignity of his own spirit 
demands it of him ; and that spirit, permanently disposed 
on that end, is a righteous spiritual disposition. That 
the human mind may attain the end of its being, it must 
be competent to attain and maintain such a spiritual dis- 
position. 

It is quite manifest that such righteous spiritual dispo- 
sition is not within us, nor in our fellow-men about us, 
with the first openings of our conscious moral activity 
and onward in life. Our own consciousness, our constant 



298 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

observation, and the whole past history of man, testify to 
the depravity of the radical disposition of man, as a race. 
It is not necessary to say, that without consciousness, 
but that without any remembrance of the origination of 
the fact in consciousness, the spirit has disposed its 
activity to the end of sense-gratification hi happiness, 
and not to the end of its own right in worthiness. When 
we awake in self-consciousness, and reflect on our acts 
and our ends of action, we already find a carnal and not 
a spiritual mind or disposition. "We may need the light 
of revelation, and it may thus be a theological doctrine 
which determines the occasion and the origin of such uni- 
versal human depravity ; but we need only the testimony 
of consciousness and observation, and it is thus only a 
psychological phenomenon, in which is determined the 
fact of the perverse and depraved disposition of man. It 
is as plain a truth in the book of human experience as in 
the Bible, "that men go astray as soon as they are 
born." With the opening dawn of consciousness, we find 
the spirit already has its bent, and is permanently dis- 
posed to self-gratification, not to self-dignity. 'The mind 
has already lost the end of its being, and is wandering 
after ends that are self-destructive. Theology must 
account for this, and also for the rectitude of the Divine 
government in either effecting or permitting this ; but 
psychology has nothing to do with the doctrines of origi- 
nal sin, and the justification of God's character in the 
permission of sin. We must here only take the fact of 
human sinfulness, and enquire how this fact bears upon 
the one point of man's capability to attain the end of his 



THE TRUE END LOST. 299 

being. The end, he finds with his first self-consciousness, 
is already lost ; the enquiry thus is, what is man's com- 
petency to regain it ? 

Here there should be allowed no side ends to come in, 
and perplex and confuse the investigation. Not at all, 
how can he be forgiven for the past ? how stand justified 
before a legal tribunal ? how avail himself of any provi- 
sions of a gracious Divine influence ? All these are within 
the religious sphere, and appropriate only for theological 
speculation. But, taking the facts of mind, just as expe- 
rience gives them to us, how competent is man to stand 
forth among his fellows, and in his own consciousness and 
to the observation of others, manifest a spiritual disposi- 
tion, that controls the whole mental activity to the grand 
end of spiritual worthiness ? This is properly and wholly 
within the psychological field, and must be found as a 
fact in mind from conscious observation; and which, 
when we go to revealed theology, will be found to have 
been already settled, and the fact itself taken for granted. 
A range of collateral investigation somewhat extensive is 
necessary to this question, and we now pursue it through 
the several remaining Chapters. 



CHAPTER L 



THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF CAUSALITY. 

We have found the mind to be self-active, and the source 
of various states and exercises which spring out from it, 
and thus that the mind is a cause for various specific 
effects. But we have given no distinct attention to this 
fact of causality, that we might attain a complete concep- 
tion of it, and discriminate fully between all varieties of 
it that may present themselves. We have the operation 
of causes in the world of nature about us, and in our own 
constitutional nature, as well as in the spontaneous activ- 
ities of our spiritual being ; and, while all without and 
all within is kept in ceaseless flow and change by these 
acting causes, it is important that we attain a correct and 
complete conception of what causality is, and that, in 
attaining its varieties, we may clearly discern how causes 
in matter and causes in mind may differ from each other. 
Such conception and discrimination is quite essential in 
the investigation on which we now enter. We cannot 
proceed a step, intelligently, in settling the fact of the 
mind's competency to attain its end, till this has been 
effected. To this end we devote this entire Chapter. 

Causes and effects stand to each other, in time, as 
sequents ; the cause is the antecedent, and the effect is 
the consequent. Even when we have the effect as instan- 
taneous upon the operation of the cause, we still conceive 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 301 

the cause to be first and the condition for the effect, and 
that the effect is wholly conditioned by it. And it is in 
this point of the connection between cause and effect, 
that all the difficulty is found, and about this one point 
have all the theories for conceiving and explaining caus- 
ality been made to turn. In common acceptation, there 
is what is termed power in the antecedent, and this power 
in exertion is that which constitutes the antecedent to be 
cause ; making or effecting the consequent, and determ- 
ining all its peculiarities. This conception of power is 
thus made the connecting medium between the antecedent 
and the consequent, and is really the conception which 
contains all the mystery. The whole difficulty in the 
conception of causation will be found, in reference to this 
interposition of power as the connecting medium between 
the sequences. 

What, then, is the true conception oi power ? Power 
itself is never phenomenon, and can in no way be brought 
within the light of consciousness. One fact precedes, 
and another succeeds, and these successive facts are 
given in consciousness, and as distinguished and defined 
become clearly perceived in the sense. But no reflec- 
tion upon the antecedent, no analysis nor generalization, 
no comparison nor contrast, no combining nor abstracting, 
no mental elaboration whatever can lay open this antece- 
dent phenomenal fact and make its inherent power to 
appear, nor take the fact itself and make power, as a 
phenomenon, to come out of it. Power is wholly irrele- 
vant and insignificant to the sense, and can thus be made 
in no way a sense-conception. As in sense, we have the 

26 



302 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

qualities and not the substantial thing in which they 
inhere, so in sense we have the successive events and not 
the causal power on which they depend. And this is as 
thoroughly true in the internal sense as in the external. 
It may be deemed to be a phenomenal fact, that when I 
energize in thinking or willing, I really become conscious 
of power, and that here power becomes a proper pheno- 
menon. But the feeling, which accompanies muscular 
or mental exertion, is by no means the power itself that 
goes out into effect, and is only a fact that appears in us 
when we energize, and as a phenomenon, wholly depen- 
dent upon the exertion and is not the power exerted. 
It is a phenomenal effect of our energizing, but is neither 
the efficiency of causality itself, nor anything that can be 
made explanatory of it. When our power goes out in 
effects, we have such phenomena in our experience ; we 
feel ourselves energizing ; but we do not feel nature in 
her energizing, nor deem that nature so feels herself in 
her ongoing of efficient causes and effects. This pheno- 
menal feeling accompanying personal power is not the 
power, nor anything that at all helps to explain what 
power itself is. The sun shines upon me, and I perceive 
warmth ; the mind goes out in thought, and I perceive 
the exertion ; but in neither case do I perceive the power 
warming, nor the power outgoing. Power is thus no 
possible object for either the external or the internal 
sense. It never appears in consciousness, and is not at 
all phenomenal. We have gained much, when we have 
learned that neither sense, nor any reflection upon what 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 303 

sense may give, can help us at all in attaining any con- 
ception of power. 

Power is wholly notion, and not phenomenon; it is 
altogether thought in the understanding, and not at all 
perceived in the sense. When any change occurs, and 
thus a new fact comes out, we term it an event ; and we 
think that some modification has been made in the ground 
which gave out the old fact, and that this modification 
has introduced the new fact. The successive facts we 
perceive, but the modifying power we do not perceive ; 
it is only thought ; and this notion as a thought we put 
between the two facts, and judge that it connects them 
as cause and effect. Thus, we perceive the sun shining 
upon the solid ice, or the yielding clay, and we find the 
new facts that the ice has liquified, and the clay has 
indurated ; we think the shining sun has so changed the 
two substances that they now give out their altered quali- 
ties, and we thus judge that there has been an efficiency, 
or power, in the sunshine, that has made the new events, 
and, as effected by it, we say, that they stand connected 
as cause and effect. The notion of power is thus condi- 
tional for the connection. Take it away, and the under- 
standing could not make the connection ; there would be 
nothing in the first on which the last depended, and thus 
no possible judgment of cause and effect could be formed. 
We cannot think in a judgment of connected cause and 
event, without this intervention of the notion of power ; 
any more than we can perceive a shape by the sense, 
without the surrounding outlines of space. We think the 
power, and connect the antecedent and consequent by it, 



304 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

and could not form any judgment of cause and effect 
without it ; but can never bring it within consciousness, 
that we may perceive what it is. 

The validity of this notion of power is, thus, nothing 
that concerns us in Empirical Psychology, and can only 
be established in the conclusions of a Rational Psychology. 
Experience must take the revealings of consciousness 
unquestioned, and can only answer the sceptic by going 
into a higher science ; so also, in thought, that which is 
essential to all connections in judgments must be admitted, 
and all question of its validity must be referred to the 
sphere of a rational science. Power itself cannot come 
into experience ; but the conviction that power is, though 
no experience can explain what it is, is essential to all 
confidence in experience itself. Without it, we could not 
at all connect the phenomena of sense, in any judgment 
of an ordered succession of events. In our thinking, and 
thus in the conviction of the understanding, our concep- 
tion of power is that of an efficiency in the antecedent 
which produces the consequent. Not power itself appears 
in consciousness, but through a process of thought in the 
understanding, the conviction that there is power comes 
within consciousness, and this conviction in experience 
must stand, in an Empirical Psychology, as valid for the 
fact of power itself. We need not attempt the enquiry 
here, what power is ? Enough that we have the convic- 
tion, that it is. 

This full distinction, that power cannot be phenomenon 
and must be notion ; not appearance in sense but only 
thought in the understanding, will prepare us at once to 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 305 

detect the many fallacies that have prevailed in the 
different conceptions of causation. It is conditional for 
all connection of phenomena in successive events, and we 
cannot think an ongoing of nature without it, and thus 
cannot have a connected experience except by means of 
it, and must therefore assume its truth as the very ground 
of all knowledge in experience. Though we cannot per- 
ceive it, we must .think it, or our very experience would 
be baseless. The conviction, that it is, is the force of 
thought; the perception, what it is, cannot from the 
nature of the case be effected. That there is an effi- 
ciency in the antecedent, which makes the consequent to 
be as it is, is the very conception of power, and this con- 
nection of antecedent and consequent by power, is the 
very conception of cause and effect ; and the valid being 
of such power, and of such connection of causes and effects 
must be assumed in experience, and can be demonstrated 
in a Rational Psychology. With this discriminate view, 
it will be of much importance to look over the different 
theories of causation and see the very point of their falla- 
cies ; and then, with the true conception of cause, clas- 
sify all its different varieties. 

Section I. Fallacious theories of causation. 
The doctrine of " occasional causes" — The Cartesian 
order of philosophizing is to distinguish all existence into 
two kinds, matter and spirit. The essence of matter is 
extension, and the essence of spirit is thought. Exten- 
sion and thought are so heterogeneous, that there can be 
no communion between them, and no mutual influence? 

26* 



306 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS EJ\x>. 

and reciprocal activities, one from the other. Each, 
thus, standing in its own isolation, may have reciprocal 
action and reaction between its own separate portions, 
but neither can be a cause for producing effects over in, 
and upon, the other. When any occasions for such inter- 
change of activities and influences occur, there must be a 
direct divine interposition, and the communion be effected 
by a direct act of the Deity. Such divine interpositions, 
in all needed cases, were termed " occasional causes ;" 
and the separate worlds of matter and mind were thus 
connected only through the medium of the great First 
Cause. 

The true conception of causality might in this case have 
been possessed, and the impossibility of its application 
between matter and mind be only in their complete isola- 
tion of being ; but the error will be found in the denial of 
the inherent pow T er of spirit to act on matter, and of the 
power of matter to modify spiritual action ; and then in 
the absurdity of helping out from the difficulty, by an 
interposition which falsifies the very basis of the theory. 
If it can be supposed that the Absolute Spirit works in 
and upon matter, then there is no difficulty, in the case 
itself, that finite spirit should, in its degree, do the same. 
The whole need of " occasional causes" is placed in the 
essential contrariety of extension and thought, matter 
and spirit, and as these are in necessary exclusiveness 
and opposition one to the other, no augmentation of spirit 
to the absolute, can at all eliminate the difficulty of 
interaction, which had been placed in the contradictory 
essences of the two sole existences. 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 307 

The doctrine of u sufficient reason." — Leibnitz anar 
lyzed all existence up to atomical being, and the atoms, 
as "indivisible," also became the "undistinguishable." 
As having nothing outer or inner distinguishable one 
from others, a faculty of representation was given them, 
and thus each one could represent or envisage all others, 
and was a little world in itself. Each microcosm was 
thus a monad ; and the monads, of which matter is com- 
pounded, represent others in unconsciousness ; those, of 
which animals are compounded, represent in partial con- 
sciousness ; and those, of which man is compounded, 
represent in clear self-consciousness. God is the Monad 
monadium ; representing all else, but himself irrepre- 
sentable, perfectly, by any. Inasmuch as no external 
communion is possible, and only by a mutual representa- 
tion, so no efficiency in one atom can modify, or work 
changes in, any other; and thus, no conception of power 
or causality can connect one event with another, but all 
is mere succession of representations. Wolff so modified 
the system, in this point, that the unconscious and self- 
conscious portions, matter and mind, could only mutually 
represent or envisage each other ; but, in both views, it 
was necessary that the mutual representations should 
harmonize, and such harmony of representation was origi- 
nally established by God. A pre-established harmony 
has so arranged the representations that they occur 
orderly and constantly. When the representation of 
sunshine is given, then that of warmth immediately and 
regularly succeeds ; when the representation of a volition 
is given, then the corresponding locomotion at once fol- 



308 THE COMPETENCY OF MIXD TO ITS END. 

lows. One has not any efficiency causing the other ; a 
pre-established arrangement makes one correspond with 
the other. One does not produce, but only tallies with 
the other. There is no causality, but the harmonized 
representation is a " sufficient reason" for the orderly 
succession. The unnumbered mirrors are so -arranged 
as always to reflect in complete harmony. 

Here is an admitted exclusion of all proper causation. 
God so handles all the reflectors, that their images make 
an orderly experience. The only causality is in the hand 
that arranges the envisaging monads. The last absurd- 
ity, and self-contradiction inheres in this ultimate point. 
All causality is excluded below, but surreptitiously 
admitted at the beginning. God is only Absolute 
Monad, envisaging all things ; -and yet it is assumed, 
that God is also efficient regulator and arranger of all 
things. If the essential being of a monad excludes all 
efficiency to outward causal activity, then the Absolute 
Monad must also be incapable of outward causal regu- 
lations. 

The doctrine of an induced belief in causation from 
habitual repetition.— When the philosophy is made fun- 
damental, that all knowledge is through sense, or reflec- 
tion upon what is given in sense, there comes at once 
the difficulty of accounting for all pure notions, in the 
understanding. Among many others, is the enquiry, 
how attain the notion of power, or causality ? Hume 
takes this, the then universally prevalent philosophy, and 
gives the only philosophical theory for any belief in the 
causal connections of nature. 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 309 

Sense, direct, gives us " the impressions" of things; 
and reflection upon these, gives us the semblances and 
off-shoots of these impressions, which are called " ideas." 
Impressions and ideas are the essence of all human know- 
ledge. Power, or causality, is no direct gift of any 
sense ; it cannot be put among our primary " impres- 
sions." It must come from reflection upon the impres- 
sions, and be thus " idea." But no legitimate analysis 
or combination, comparison or contrast, can get the idea 
of power, causality, necessary connection, from mere 
antecedent and consequent. The sequences are all that 
sense gives, as primary " impressions ;" no logical reflec- 
tion can get the " idea" of cause ; inasmuch as we have 
it in our belief, there must be some way of accounting 
for it. Its genesis is wholly illegitimate ; and it is thus 
a spurious production, -and can put forth no title to be 
accredited as knowledge. It is utter credulity at its 
highest strength. There is nothing but antecedent and 
consequent ; there cannot be known anything in the ante- 
cedent, why it should have that consequent ; it simply 
has been thus so often, that we have come to believe the 
connection necessary. The sequences have been together 
in that order so many times, that merely by dint of repe- 
tition and habit we have yielded, and credulously believed 
it must be so, and have called it cause and effect. It is 
neither " impression," nor "idea," which would be know- 
ledge ; it is wholly made up by our own credulity, and 
is thus truly fiction, though attaining universal "belief." 
The philosopher must be sceptical in reference to it, and 
to all deductions and conclusions derived from it. 



310 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

That this method of accounting for the fact of our 
conviction of causation is not true, may be seen at once 
in this, that it does not always, nor often, require a long 
repetition of the sequences to induce the conviction that 
they are connected by a causal efficiency. The child, 
once smarting from the sting of a bee, will recognize the 
connection of cause and effect here, as thoroughly as 
after twenty repetitions. But it is true, that with only a 
philosophy of sensation and reflection, all accounting for 
the genesis of the conception of cause is wholly impossible. 
That it is a fiction, in some way surreptitiously enforcing 
belief, must be the philosophical conclusion ; and the 
manner of Hume, in accounting for it, will be as plausi- 
ble as any. The great error is, in at all attempting to 
account for it through sense. It is wholly notional and 
not phenomenal; and, as conditional for all connected 
experience, is to be assumed valid in an experimental 
psychology. The exposition and demonstration of it 
belong to a rational science alone. 

The doctrine of '" invariable succession" as resolved 
into the constitution of the human mind. — Brown dis- 
penses with all notion of power, as giving any necessary 
connection to the sequences, and includes all there is in 
the conception of cause within a bare fact of " invariable 
succession." The notion of power, as some third thing 
between the antecedent and the consequent, is wholly a 
delusion. That the common mind has formed to itself 
some phantasm, called power, which it interposes between 
the sequences, as if it helped the conception of their 
invariable succession, may be accounted for by a refer. 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 311 

ence to various illusory influences ; but it is, in fact, a 
mere chimera, and must be utterly discarded. It helps 
nothing if you have it, and only interposes another diffi- 
culty ; for this third thing, called power, must be only 
another phenomenon added to the antecedent and conse- 
quent, and itself just as difficult to be apprehended in 
its connection with either, as would be their connection 
together without it. It, in truth, makes all the mystery, 
and when wholly excluded, the whole conception of cause 
and effect is thoroughly perspicuous. All notion of 
power being discarded, there remains simple invariable- 
ness of succession in certain sequences, and this concep- 
tion of invariableness is the peculiarity of the succession 
called cause and effect. If the succession might some- 
times fail, then would the conception of causality be 
excluded, but when the sequences are deemed to be 
unfailing, then is it the connection of cause. To say, that 
a certain degree of heat in a metal is invariably followed 
by its liquescence, expresses the same thing as to say, so 
much heat is a power to melt the metal, and both are 
tantamount to saying the heat is the cause of the melting. 
But, if nothing efficiently connects the antecedent and 
consequent, the enquiry must arise, whence can come the 
conviction of this invariableness ? We must not attempt 
to interpose the notion of power, which may make the 
consequent to be a production from the antecedent ; we 
must wholly exclude such notion ; and hence the query 
— whence is this conception of invariableness possible ? 
How can we think invariable succession in the absence 
of all efficient production ? This knot is cut, with no 



312 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

attempt to loose it. All is resolved into the constitution 
of the human mind. We are so formed, as to anticipate 
infallibly, in the appearance of some phenomena, the 
sequence of their respective fellow phenomena. We do 
not need a repetition ; but instinctively, if one comes, we 
forecast the other. It is " an internal revelation, like a 
voice of ceaseless and unerring prophecy." 

If there is nothing in the antecedent efficiently to pro- 
duce the consequent, then is it as philosophical to refer 
the conviction of invariable connection to a peculiar 
mental conformation as any way. But it will not reach 
to the real conviction which we find has some way come 
into the consciousness. Simple invariable succession is 
not our conviction of the connection in cause and effect, 
nor at all like it. Night invariably succeeds the day ; 
one o'clock invariably succeeds twelve o'clock; one fixed 
star invariably succeeds another fixed star in crossing 
our meridian ; but none of these invariable successions is 
our conviction of causal connection. If we assume two 
pair of wheels, one of which has each wheel separately 
driven, so that the cogs in their periphery exactly match 
in every revolution ; but the other pair is so constructed, 
that, one wheel being moved, its cogs drive the other ; 
there will be alike invariable succession in each case ; but 
we must carry the mind quite beyond the fact of invari- 
able succession, to some efficiency in an antecedent that 
produces the consequent. No conception of simple suc- 
cession, no matter how invariable, is our notion of cause. 
The sequences belong to the perceptions of the sense, 
and perpetual perceptions cannot give connections in a 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 313 

judgment of the understanding without the notion being 
thought ; the notion of power must be there, or the inva- 
riableness of succession comes from a void. 

The doctrine that causality is only a regulative concep- 
tion in our own minds. — Kant assumes the phenomenal 
sequences to be real ; but what the substances as things 
in themselves, of which these phenomena are only quali- 
ties, truly are, can never be known by human intelli- 
gence. The mind, as a regulative principle for its think- 
ing in judgments, is obliged to use the conception of 
causality, and bring its sequences into connection under 
this category ; but this notion of causality is altogether 
subjective ; a mental conception for regulating the mind's 
own thinking ; and we cannot say that the phenomenal 
realities have any such connections in the things them- 
selves. The mind has such original forms, as pure con- 
ceptions, from itself; and, in thinking, it fits these forms 
on to the real phenomena, and brings them into orderly 
connection thereby ; but it is the mind which makes the 
connections, and not that the connections are in the things 
themselves, and that they make the mind to know after 
their conditions. 

Section II. The true conception of cause. — It 
may be said here, that it is competent to demonstrate in 
Rational Psychology, that the subjective notion of caus- 
ality must have also its objective being in things them- 
selves, or the human mind could never determine the 
passing phenomena to their successive periods in a whole 
of time ; and that because we do so determine successive 

27 



314 THE COMPETENCY OF MINT) TO ITS EXD. 

phenomena in our experience, therefore nature is truly 
successive in her causes ; but such statement, and espe- 
cially such demonstration, have here no relevancy. 
Experience, as such, must rest on her own conditions, 
and cannot itself question and examine that which must 
first be in order that itself should be. To it, the notion 
of power, and efficient production in causality, must be 
valid; and an Empirical Psychology is not to be dis- 
turbed, by anything that lies out of and beyond experi- 
ence. If any such questions come up, they must be 
wholly ignored here, and referred over to their proper 
transcendental sphere. In experience, the conviction 
plainly and universally is, that nature has its powers ; 
that an efficient working goes on in both mind and matter, 
and produces, in each realm, its changes, which manifest 
themselves in perpetually passing phenomena ; and the 
true conception of cause can be equalled in nothing, that 
does not put an efficiency in the antecedent, which makes 
the consequent to be its conditioned product. Experi- 
ence founds on nothing short of this ; and for an Empi- 
rical Philosophy, this foundation must be unquestioned. 
We are not to say, the phenomena come in succession, 
and habit makes us deem the successions necessary ; nor. 
the conformation of our mind makes us to predict them 
as invariable ; nor, that a subjective conception of cause 
regulates our thinking of these phenomena together ; but 
we are to say — our conscious conviction of causality is 
a power in the antecedent to make the consequent. They 
are not mere sequences, but one springs from the other, 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 315 

and is thus event ; one is the product of the other, and 
is thus effect. 

With this conception of causality, we are now ready 
to discriminate different causes. 

Section III. Classification of the varieties of 
cause. — It will be more conclusive if we also give a place 
to all distinctions of succession, and thereby show, in one 
view, the gradations from simple succession up to the 
most perfect causality. We shall draw the lines rapidly, 
though still distinctly, between the varieties. 

Mere succession may be given in two varieties. Sim- 
ple succession is when one phenomenon follows another 
casually ; occurring once in that order of sequence, but 
no probability or expectation of a repetition. There was a 
cause for each fact in the sequence, but their causes are 
not regarded, and they are viewed only as independent 
occurrences, and which we say, somehow so happened to 
come in succession; as "he went out into the porch, and 
the cock crew." — Mark, xiv, 68. Invariable succession 
gives the same sequences at all times, while both pheno- 
mena are the results of independent sources of appear- 
ance. Thus, of the invariable order of the seasons ; of 
day and night in alternation ; of one place on the earth 
invariably passing under the meridian consequently to 
another that is at the eastward of it; etc. In all such 
eases of succession, though the sequence be invariable, 
we have only concurrence, not adherence. The sequen- 
ces have no connection as cause and effect. 



316 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

Qualified causes are destitute of all proper efficiency, 
and yet stand more intimately related to their conse- 
quents than in mere succession. They are familiarly 
termed causes ; but, since they involve no conception 
of efficient production one of the other, they have their 
qualifying adjuncts to mark their distinction from all 
efficient causes. Conditional causes are such antece- 
dents as must be riven as occasions for the consequents. 
The efficiency, which is in the proper cause, cannot work 
in the production of the effect, except on the condition 
that this qualified cause is also given. This may be the 
removal of a hindrance to the efficiency — as, the with- 
drawment of the support, and the fall of the body resting 
upon it ; the shutting off of the moving force, and the 
stopping of the machinery ; the taking away of life, and 
the corruption and dissolution of the animal body; etc. 
In all the above cases, no real efficiency for the conse- 
quent is supposed hi the antecedent; it is only the taking 
away of an efficient counteraction to the power which is 
to produce the consequent. In another form, there may 
be the direct supply of an occasion — as, in bringing the 
fire and gunpower in contact ; or, the flint and steel in 
collision ; or, the presence of some object to the sense ; 
in which cases the explosion, the spark, the perception, 
are effects, not directly of these antecedents, but only by 
occasion of them. Such cause was known by the old 
schoolmen as causa sine qua non. Final causes are the 
terminating ends of actions, and are viewed as the objec^ 
tive motives to the act, or as the consummation for which 
the work was designed. Thus sight is the end for which 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 317 

the eye was designed ; and happiness the end for which 
the animal acts ; and virtue the end for which the spirit 
is given ; and as such inducements to the being of the 
means, the ends are called causes, yet as they are not 
the efficients in producing the means, they are causes in 
only a qualified sense, and are known as teleological or 
final causes. They are that for which the efficient cause 
is exerted. 

We now come to those sequences which are properly 
causes and effects, and though differing among themselves 
in other particulars, they will all agree in this, that the 
antecedent is efficient in producing the consequent, and 
herein will they all be distinguished from the foregoing. 

Mechanical cause is an applied force for directly 
counteracting other forces, chiefly that of gravity. Its 
action is the push or pull of some mechanism. They 
may be considered as modifications of two simple mechan- 
ical powers — the lever, including the proper lever, the 
flexible lever or pulley, the wheel and axis, and the cog 
wheel and loco-motive-wheel; the inclined plane, includ- 
ing the simple form, the wedge, the spiral plane or screw, 
and the arch. Here, also, may be placed, as a mechan- 
ical force, all direct action by impulse. 

Physical causes are the forces inherent in nature, 
and which are perpetually in action to make the succes- 
sive changes of the material universe. They are other 
than mechanical impulses, and include all the primordial 
forces which belong to material being, and which are 
giving unceasing motion and change to matter, both in 
its forms and localities. Without assuming very exact 

27* 



318 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS ENt). 

delineations, we may recognize them as gravitating force, 
including repulsion as well as attraction ; bipolar-forces, 
magnetism, electricity, galvanism, and perhaps as bipolar, 
combustion, illumination, chemical affinities, crystaliza- 
tion, etc. They may all be conceived as simple acts in 
different directions of counteraction, and in their com- 
mingled working, showing their effects in the planetary 
motions, and producing all cosmic changes, pneumatic, 
hydrostatic, or telluric. 

Vital cause is a living force inherent originally in the 
germ, and in its activity producing an organic develop- 
ment of all the rudimental elements. It may be viewed 
as a simple activity, producing itself and thus ever 
advancing ; stating itself and thus ever abiding. The life 
of the plant ever produces itself in the advanced bud, 
and also ever states itself in the permanent stock ; as 
does the life of the animal advance in the assimilation of 
new elements, and remain in the incorporation of the old. 
Life has two aspects in its activity, viz. that of develop- 
ment, as above, in which the vital cause goes on to its 
maturity in the parent stock; and then, that of propaga- 
tion, where, through the medium of sex, the life passes 
over into a new germ, and by refusing to state itself and 
thus posit itself in the old stock, it thereby separates 
itself from the parent, and is the organic embryo of 
another being after the old type. Vital causes thus 
work on from age to age, maturing the present and pro- 
pagating the future being. 

Spontaneous cause is the originating from itself some 
thing wholly new, and not a mere production of itself into 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 319 

another. In all mechanical, physical, and vital causes, 
the cause itself is caused in its action, and produces 
itself into its effects ; in spontaneous cause, the activity 
originates in and from itself, and creates that which is 
other than itself produced. It is solely the prerogative 
of spiritual being. Nature, neither as material, vege- 
table nor animal, has any proper spontaneity. There is 
ever causality, a tergo ; securing only a production of 
what is, onwards to another form of the same in the 
becoming. Nature, thus, from first to last, has no new 
originations, but only a change of what already is, into 
another form, and which is only a propagation. New 
animals, and new men, exclusive of their spiritual being, 
are as much propagations of the old stock, as new trees, 
new herbs, or even new wine from the old cluster. 
What comes from nature is itself natured; what comes 
from spirit is a spontaneous origination. So nature came 
from the hand of its Creator at first ; a spontaneous origi- 
nation, not something already in being, and only pushed 
forward in another form by a conditioning nature still 
behind it. So rational thought, and spiritual feeling and 
volition, are new originations, and not old existences pro- 
duced in new forms. The whole consenting spirit, of its 
own accord, sponte, originates the new thought, the new 
affection, or the new purpose ; and these are altogether 
its own creations, and not nature's, nor another spirit's, 
nor God's workmanship. 

But mere spontaneity is still conditioned in its occa- 
sion. It truly originates, with no conditioning nature 
working back of it, but is cause for origination only io 



320 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

given occasions. The reason's eye must see the neces- 
sary and universal principle within the reason itself, and 
the intellectual movement goes on in glad accord under 
its guiding light, and thus the free thought is consum- 
mated ; but the spirit is cause for thought only in such 
occasions ; and with such occasions, only in that one 
direction. So with the affection ; the object must be in 
the spiritual vision, and the whole according soul assent- 
ing, and in such occasion the affection embraces its object ; 
but the spirit is cause for that affection only in that occa- 
sion, and can have no alternative. The thought and the 
affection are free from all conditioning in nature, but 
they have open to them only one direction by conditions 
within the spirit itself. 

Cause in Liberty is not only spontaneous, but with 
an open alternative. It is the capacity of the spirit, 
knowing its ethical rule in knowing what is due to itself, 
to hold firmly by it against all the colliding appetites of 
a lower nature. It may spontaneously dispose its activity 
in this direction, though another direction be also open 
before it. In the disposition, unlike the thought and the 
affection, there is an alternative, and an occasion given 
to either course ; and the spirit is potential for a right 
disposition, and responsible to its own tribunal and to 
God, that it effect and maintain such a consummation. 
As spiritual intellect and susceptibility, the soul is cause 
for spontaneous origination ; as spiritual will, the soul is 
cause for originating one result, when there was also an 
open way to another. Cause in liberty is will, and is the 
highest conceivable causality, supernatural, and ethically 



THE CONCEPTION OF CAUSE. 321 

responsible. In man, though fallen, the alternatives still 
lie open; and the self-conditioning of the spirit only, 
and no necessitating condition of nature, perpetuates the 
depravity. In all holy beings, the spiritual disposition is 
maintained in its integrity, though to such the alternative 
in perversion is still conceivable. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 

Some sequences have no connection by a direct efficiency ; 
some stand in the nature of the case itself, without any 
interposition of power ; and others are connected by a 
direct efficiency in their production. Even where effi- 
cient causes make their effects to be, there is a wide 
difference of degree in the clearness with which the 
efficiency reveals itself, and the grounds on which it can 
be determined beforehand that the causal efficiency will 
be exerted. The certainty of events must, thus, stand 
on quite different grounds, and one be certain because 
of this, and another certain because of that interposition. 
This whole ground of certainty needs to be examined, in 
order to the settlement of the question, how far the human 
mind is competent to gain the ends of its being ? We 
need not attempt any explanation of the mode of know- 
ledge, or ground of certainty, to the Absolute Mind, save 
that to God knowledge cannot be mediate and derived ; 
but we enquire only for the grounds of certainty in refer- 
ence to man, and the connections which stand in our 
human experience. 

From the comprehensive view already taken of the 
successions of phenomena, and the different connections 
of causal efficiency, we are prepared to attain and accu- 
rately discriminate the different grounds of certainty, in 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 328 

reference to all the sequences in human experience. We 
will find these grounds of certainty in the varied order 
of connected events, and show the bearing of each upon 
the certainty of the fact itself, and upon the knowledge 
of the fact, as made to stand in the convictions of our 
own consciousness. 

Section I. The negation of all ground of 
certainty.— For all that has been, is, or will be, there 
must be some ground on which the certainty of the being 
of such facts rests, and without which no such certainty 
could be predicated ; and thus for all facts, past, present 
and future, there are positive grounds of certainty. But 
some assumptions may be made of the origin of all facts, 
which would do away with all ground of certainty in 
reference to any fact, and which need first to be pre- 
sented and their absurdity exposed, in order that we may 
proceed intelligently and confidently on the conviction 
that all facts have their grounds of certainty. These 
negations of all ground of certainty are perversions of 
the very laws of thought itself. 

The assumption of chance.— A common use of the 
word chance is in reference to such events as occur 
without a recognition of the causes inducing them. 
Because we were quite ignorant of the operating causes, 
and the event has come unexpectedly up in our experi- 
ence, we say, ' somehow it has so happened ;' or, ' it 
chanced to be.' So, because the connections, which 
link events in their series, are not recognized, we say 
that " time and chance happen to all."— Eccl. ix, 11. 



824 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

In the turning of dice, or any form of casting lots, we 
also speak of leaving the event to the determination of 
chance ; but the real meaning in all is the same, viz. that 
we withdraw the mind from all recognition of the acting 
efficiencies that must secure the event, and because we 
exclude all control ourselves, and leave unseen causes to 
control, we say we have left it to chance. 

But the philosophical conception of chance utterly 
denies all causation. All efficiency is excluded, and 
something comes from nothing. Not as creation from 
nothing external to the Creator, but creation exclusive 
of the Creator himself; origination from an utter void of 
all being. Such a conception, were it possible, would of 
course annihilate all ground of certainty. There is no 
ground for the being itself, and can, therefore, be no 
ground for any certainty about it. It comes from nothing, 
exists in nothing, and goes out in nothing, and can have 
no determination in any possible certainty. But such 
negation of all causality is impossible to the human under- 
standing. It is not merely a ghost which appears with- 
out substance, and may be a phantasm made by the 
mind; but a ghost that has no maker, subjective nor 
objective ; inhering in nothing and adhering to nothing. 
The understanding can connect it in no judgment, nor 
bring it within any possible form of thought. It is that 
about which the mind -cannot reflect, and concerning 
which it can deduce nothing, and conclude nothing ; and 
which is thus the absurdity of being understood, without 
its coming at all within the understanding. 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 325 

To exclude all ground of certainty in chance, is thus 
wholly to exclude all causality. If we merely ignore the 
cause, while we yet do not deny that there is cause, we 
leave all its ground of certainty, both that it must be, and 
what it must be, and only exclude the certainty from our 
cognition. The common use of chance excludes nothing 
of certainty ; the philosophical meaning, which is a nega- 
tive of all causality, is, in that, a negation of all ground 
of certainty. The human mind cannot so connect in any 
form of judgments, and cannot, therefore, exclude from 
its facts their grounds of certainty. 

The assumption of fate. — The common acceptation 
of fate is that an event is made inevitable, and the issue 
bound in its connections beyond entreaty or resistance. 
But with this view, the ongoings of nature would be fate. 
The determinations of infinite power and wisdom would 
be fate. This is destiny ; an event destined by omni- 
science, and executed by omnipotence. There may 
sometimes be added the conception of arbitrariness, as if 
the sovereign disposer consulted only his own will, as^in 
Mahomedan predestination; but this still is not the 
proper meaning of fate. In all the above, there is a 
ground of certainty, and this of so fixed/ a nature as to 
be inevitable. 

But the true philosophical conception of fate is that of 
blind causation undirected and undeterminable by any 
conditions. In all natural causes, the thing on which 
the cause works is as determinative of the effect as the 
working of the cause itself. The sun-shine, as cause, is 
conditioned to one effect by the nature of the wax, and 

28 



326 THE COMPETENCY OE MIND TO ITS END. 

to another effect by the nature of the clay, and by know- 
ing the cause working, and the substance on which it 
works, there is the ground of certainty in reference to 
the event. But the conception of fate, is that of cause 
merely, without any conditions. It is positive of an effi- 
ciency to produce, but negative of all conditioning in that 
which is to be produced. There is an acting efficiency 
to originate something, but there is nothing to react upon 
that efficiency to give to it any qualification. The blind 
giant will work, but he has no directory ; neither end 
nor aim ; no pity nor fear ; no rule nor restraint. There 
is nothing to heed prayer ; and thus nothing to pray to, 
nor to pray for. There is no destiny to work out, for no 
result is destmed; and no consummation to reach, for no 
end is proposed. There is simply a power fated to work 
on incessantly, but nothing in nor out of itself to deter- 
mine the direction or the product of its working. Heart- 
less, aimless, lawless ; man is placed beneath it, and it is 
his wisdom neither to hope nor to fear, but patiently to 
ensure. The old Stoic philosophy put both gods and 
men beneath such a blind power, and thus required the 
patience of hopelessness and the fortitude of despair, and 
made it the highest evil to be disquieted by anything. 

There is here ground for certainty that something will 
be, for there is causality working; but there is no ground 
for certainty what the effects will be, inasmuch as there 
is no conditioning of this blind and senseless efficiency. 
But such a conception of blind, naked causation is as 
impossible for the human understanding as chance. 
Physical causes must have their reaction from the sub- 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 327 

stances on which they act, or the understanding can 
connect no causes and effects in a judgment ; and moral 
agents must have a reflex bearing of all their acts upon 
themselves, or they can be brought within no judgment 
of moral responsibility. That any power should be 
wholly unconditioned is inconceivable. It would require 
the understanding to be as crazy in its thinking, as the 
fatality is lawless in its working. 

Section II. The positive grounds oe certainty. 
- — Under this head is included all connections of pheno- 
mena which are held in necessity. They are opposed to 
chance, inasmuch as there is a ground of their being, and 
they are opposed to fate, inasmuch as they are conditioned 
to be what they are. They are of several varieties. 

By necessity, in common acceptation, is meant an 
event that occurs in the face of all opposition and hin- 
drance. The cause is conceived as overcoming a coun- 
teraction. Individual necessity is a cause overcoming 
in that particular case ; and universal necessity is when 
the cause must overcome in all cases. But this concep- 
tion, of opposition and resistance overcome, is not essen- 
tial to the true meaning of necessity. It is more properly 
impossibility of prevention, and is only one species of 
necessity. 

In a philosophical acceptation, necessity is inclusive 
of all that which has no alternative. Whether opposition 
be conceived or not, if there is no alternative to the 
event, it is necessary. The word necessity should be 
used in no other application., when philosophical precision 



328 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS EBfD. 

is designed by it. It cannot admit of alteration, for 
there is no alter; it can admit of no negation, for a nega- 
tive would itself be an alternative. When, therefore, an 
event is grounded in necessity, its certainty is infallible, 
in the sense that no other event can then and there be. 
In as many ways as we conceive of connections without 
an alternative, in so many ways may there be events 
grounded in infallible certainty, and it is important that 
we be able clearly to distinguish each in its own peculiar 
ground. 

Absolute necessity is when in the nature of the case 
there is no alternative, and thus the result lies beyond the 
reach of all efficiency. It is not the product of power, 
and must thus be unconditioned by power. Power, or 
causality has no reference to it, can neither unmake nor 
change it; but the truth stands out unalterable in its 
own absolute being. All such truths are given in the 
insight of the reason. Such is the certainty of the Deity, 
and of all his perfections in connection with his being. 
God is, and as he is, from no causal efficiency. His 
ground of being stands beyond the reach of all power, 
finite or infinite, and as thus absolute, its certainty is 
absolute. In the nature of the case, there can be no 
alternative to his being. So also, with all necessary and 
universal truths. Their certainty is grounded hi the 
nature of the case, and no conception of an alternative 
in their case can be possible. All mathematical intui- 
tions are of this kind, and their certainty is absolute, 
because grounded in the very nature of the case. The 
radii of the same circle must all be equal ; any three 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 329 

points must lie in the same plane ; the two acute angles 
of a right angled triangle must together be equal to a 
right angle ; etc. An alternative is inconceivable as it 
would involve an absurdity. So, in the same way, of 
necessary physical principles ; they have an absolute 
certainty in their own ground. Matter must have place 
and dimensions; must be divisible and impenetrable; 
force must involve counteraction; action and reaction 
must be opposite and equal ; etc. If the conception at 
all be, the very case contains these truths ; and all con- 
ception of an alternative would make a wholly different 
case. Here is absolute necessity. 

Physical necessity is grounded in the efficiency of 
physical causation. In the ongoings of nature, the ante- 
cedent conditions the consequent, and the whole series is 
truly determined in the first link. If only nature work 
on in its causes, there can be no alternatives, and all 
change must be effected by a supernatural interposition. 
There is a ground of certainty in each link what all its 
successors must be, inasmuch as the causal efficiency that 
is to produce future changes is wholly contained within 
it. Any new originations of efficiency in nature cannot 
spring out from nature, inasmuch as the addition would 
be wholly from a void, and all nature may have sprung 
by chance out of a void as readily as that additional por- 
tion. A power above nature must put all new things in 
nature, so that nature alone must work on through all her 
processes with no alternatives. Her inward efficiency 
necessitates her processes, and the certainty what they 

must be is grounded in this efficiency, and the events are 

28* 



330 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

as inevitable as the ongoing of nature. They are only 
not absolute, because an alternative can be conceived 
through a miraculous interposition. Nature is unalter- 
able in her course to all but a supernatural efficiency. 

Hypothetical necessity has its ground in the origina- 
tions of spontaneous causality. Pure spontaneity is 
always supernatural, for it originates new things of its 
own accord, sponte; and thus, it is not a mere production 
of somewhat that already lay back in nature. Nature is 
always caused cause, and never spontaneous cause. 
What we term spontaneous production, spontaneous com- 
bustion, etc., is still nature acting according to her inner 
conditions, and producing in another form what already 
is, and not any origination of wholly a new thing. It is 
spontaneous, only as no efficiency is supplied from some 
foreign causality. But rational spirit originates from 
itself new things, in its thoughts and emotions. They 
are not productions of somewhat that already is, and only 
an old thing put forward in a new form ; they are really 
new creations. They come into nature, as something 
not at all of nature ; but as wholly born of the spirit. A 
poem is a new creation, a thing made by the spirit of the 
poet, and added to nature, as truly as that poet's spirit 
is put into nature by its maker. And so with a science ; 
a philosophy ; an idea ; they are spontaneously origin- 
ated from the rational spirit. 

But all such originations are hypothetical. They differ 
from the causality of nature, in that they are not condi- 
tioned by something back in nature ; they do not come 
along down through nature's connected series. They 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 331 

involve a superinduction upon nature , of that which is 
not of nature. A spiritual existence must be, and must 
be so placed in relation to nature that it may operate in 
and upon nature, and find the occasion for its thinking 
or feeling through nature ; and then, with such an hypo- 
thesis, the effect is necessary. The spirit, as cause, is 
as efficient as nature, and, on such occasion, is cause for 
such origination and for no other; and, therefore, the 
occasion being given, the cause must go out in action, 
and the particular thought or emotion is necessary. The 
freedom of thought and feeling is not at all will in 
liberty; it is only causation free from nature, and acting 
in its own spontaneity ; but still, cause in that occasion 
for only that one thing. With such occasion, it must be 
thought, and such thought ; and with another occasion, it 
must be emotion, and such emotion. It is cause, in that 
occasion, for that one thing, and has thus no alternative 
in its occasion ; on that hypothesis the event is neces- 
sary. The ground of certainty, thus covers both the 
efficiency of the spontaneous cause, and the occasion for 
it, and is certain without alternative if the efficiency and 
its occasion be ; and is only not absolute certainty, inas- 
much as such hypothesis may not be fact. The certainty 
is grounded on an hypothesis becoming a fact, and is 
then a certainty from necessity ; for, to the event there 
is then no alternative. 

The term hypothetical necessity is sometimes applied 
in physical causation, where a conditional cause must 
intervene. On condition of contact, fire explodes gun- 
powder; and on the hypothesis of such contact, the 



332 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

explosion is necessary. But with mere physical caus- 
ality, there can be no such hypothesis. What already is 
must condition all that shall be, and the contact and explo- 
sion are already determined in the present conditions of 
nature. Not so with spontaneous causes. Nature can 
not determine their being and relationship to itself. 
There is here a genuine hypothesis, depending on the 
interposition of some supernatural author. A spirit must 
exist, and stand in certain relations to nature ; and this 
nothing now in nature can determine, but must depend 
upon the working of a supernatural efficiency ; and only 
so, is the event certain with no alternative. 

And now, in all the above varieties of necessity, we 
have grounds of certainty which differ in reference to 
their truths and facts as the necessities themselves differ. 
They are all without alternatives, in their respective 
cases, but the exclusion of all alternatives is from quite 
different sources. In absolute necessity, no alternative 
can be from the nature of the case, and no conception of 
any application of power could make an alternative. In 
physical necessity, no alternative can come from nature, 
nor from that which does not counteract nature, and thus 
only from a supernatural being. In hypothetical neces- 
sity no alternative can come from anything, provided the 
hypothesis be fact ; but nature can neither secure nor 
hinder that the hypothesis be fact. The highest cer- 
tainty is grounded in absolute necessity, for no applica- 
tion of power can demolish it. The next in order is 
physical necessity, as a ground of certainty ; for nature 
already is, and is working out her conditioned processes, 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 333 

and she reveals nothing that is about to counteract her 
working. Hypothetical necessity is the least certain to 
man, for he has the least data for determining the validity 
of the hypothetical fact. But all are alike inevitable in 
their own grounds, for the ground being given, they have 
neither of them any alternative. 

Section III. A possible ground of certainty in 
contingency. — Contingency is used, in common accep- 
tation, with much the same latitude as chance* An 
event is said to be contingent, when it is supposed to 
happen without a foreseen causality determining it. 
Especially is that event denominated contingent, when it 
is supposed to depend upon some other event which is 
yet indeterminate. It has been used with a more pre- 
cise definition, as " something which has absolutely no 
ground or reason, with which its existence has any fixed 
and certain connection." This can hardly be made to 
differ from the true conception of chance, which is origin- 
ation from nothing. But all conception of contingency, 
as a happening, chance, accident, fails to reach the pre- 
cise meaning. It is an event which comes with a touch. 
It hangs in suspense, and a voluntary touch determines it. 

The true philosophical application is to an event that 
has an alternative. It is the converse of the word neces- 
sity, not in the sense of uncaused, but of being avoida- 
ble. A contingent event has its efficient cause, and also 
has its occasion for the efficiency to work, but the work- 
ing is not shut up to one issue. At the same time that 
the touch brought that event, the alternative was open to 



334 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

touch and bring in another event to the exclusion of the 
former. When the touch was given, it was not inevita- 
ble ; not a necessity ; but had an open alternative. All 
physical causes work with no alternative, and thus in 
necessity ; all free cause works with an alternative ; an 
avoidability ; a liberty ; and thus contingently. The 
word truly applies only to an event that depends upon a 
will. It stands opposed to necessity solely in this sense, 
that it always implies avoidability, while necessity is 
inevitable. 

And, here, the point of enquiry is, has a contingent 
event any ground of certainty? The very definition 
excludes the certainty that is unavoidable ; necessitated ; 
is there then an opportunity for predicating any certainty 
of a contingent event ? The answer to this is made plain, 
only by a clear conception of what is a will in liberty, 
and the occasion of its action. To the human mind, 
which must attain its knowledge through some media, in 
all facts of future existence, there can be no ground of 
certainty in the mere efficiency. The will in liberty is 
cause for either alternative, and may dispose its activity 
for the right of the spiritual being against the sensual 
appetite, or it may yield to natural inclination and make 
carnal gratification its end ; and simply, that it has a 
capacity for these alternatives affords no ground of cer- 
tainty, which event will come out. When we know a 
cause which has no alternative, the cause itself is suffi- 
cient means for determining the event. The ground of 
certainty is in the efficiency of the cause itself. But 
when we know a cause w T hich has an alternative, the 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 335 

cause itself is no ground for determining which alterna- 
tive will come. No ground of certainty can be found in 
the bare efficiency. But, if that cause has already con- 
ditioned itself by a previous action, we have in this some 
thing more than the bare efficiency, even the conditioning 
which its own directing of its activity has already given 
to it, and this may now be taken as a fair ground for 
determining the certainty of its future action. What is 
the ground of certainty given by this conditioning of 
itself in a previous act ? 

When the spirit has already gone out in its activity 
towards an end, there is in that a disposing of itself in 
reference to that end ; and as all ends must ultimately 
resolve themselves into worthiness or happiness, this dis- 
posing of itself in reference to any end truly gives to the 
self-active spirit a radical disposition, and which is virtu- 
ous or vicious according to the ultimate end towards 
which the activity is directed. If then, this disposition 
be now considered, there is in it a condition which gives 
its ground for certainty in the events to come. That it 
is a virtuous disposition will give the stronger confidence, 
that it will not turn back on itself and go out after appe- 
tite ; or that it is a vicious disposition will give the less 
hope, that it will convert itself to the end of its highest 
worth, and resist appetite. The confidence of the one, 
and the hopelessness of the other is each proportionate to 
the strength of the disposed spiritual activity towards its 
respective end. This may be to such a degree, that we 
shall have no hesitation in affirming what the event will 
be, nor in risking any interest upon the issue. At the 



336 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

very strongest degree, it will not rise to necessity, for 
the alternative will still be open ; the event will be avoid- 
able ; but there may be the certainty that though avoid- 
able it will not be avoided, and thus the event may be 
infallible. 

But the disposition is not the only conditioning that 
should be regarded. The constitutional susceptibility 
may itself be more or less readily and intensely excita- 
ble, or the objects appealing to it may be of more or less 
motive-influence ; and accordingly as these may concur 
with the disposition, will the certainty of the event be 
augmented. The stronger virtue with the less tempta- 
tion, or the deeper depravity with the stronger tempta- 
tion, in the absence of the contrary influences in each 
case, will proportionally strengthen the grounds of cer- 
tainty : yea, if it be apprehended that, at the point of 
beginning spiritual existence, strength of subjective sus- 
ceptibility and objective influence be all on one side, or 
very largely predominant ; this may even be a ground of 
certainty, how the spirit shall dispose its activity and give 
to itself an original and radical disposition. In none of 
these cases is there at all an exclusion of the open alter- 
native, and the event is thus wholly contingent, and yet 
it may be certain that the touch will be on one side. To 
an insight so keen and comprehensive as to detect all the 
conditioning of temperament and applied motive, and 
especially the direction and strength of radical disposi- 
tion, it might be no difficult thing to predict infallibly 
what events were coming from the efficiency of free 
causes. The certainty differs in its ground from all cer- 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 337 

tainty in necessity. In necessity the event must be, and 
there is no alternative ; in contingency there is an alter- 
native, and it can never be said that from the very 
efficiency it must be, but only that in the conditions it 
certainly will be. To mark this distinction, the first is 
sometimes called physical certainty, and the last moral 
certainty : though each may be infallible. 

It should be understood that all these grounds of cer- 
tainty are in reference to human forms of judgments. 
Without such grounds, it is not possible that we should 
connect events in any judgments, nor can we conceive of 
any other forms of thinking in judgments except through 
the series of conditions and conditioned. But we know 
that, to the Deity, some other form of knowing, altogether 
inexplicable by us, must be possessed. His knowledge 
cannot be mediate, through organs of sense and connec- 
tions of substances and causes. He must know things 
as they are in themselves, immediately, intuitively, 
thoroughly. The future and the past must be wholly 
irrelevant to God's mode of knowledge, though he knows 
what quality and succession are to us. To God, there is 
no cold nor heat ; no nervous pain nor muscular weari- 
ness ; no phenomenon of sensual appearance ; and hence, 
no thinking of them in connected judgments ; but to him 
all things in themselves are plain and naked. As he 
knows what a guilty conscience is, immediately without 
experience, so he must know what all our sense and 
understanding-cognitions are without experience. God 
does not think, and conclude ; he must know by imme- 
diate insight. Grounds of certainty, thus, are all irrele- 

29 



338 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

rant to God. He knows the things that are future to 
us, and needs not to look through their conditions to 
determine them. Man knows the future conditionally, 
God knows it absolutely. 

Section IV. Different applications of cer- 
tainty. — There is, as the primary and most comprehen- 
sive application of certainty, that of infallible being, and 
■which may be termed the certainty of truth. It wholly 
excludes all regard to the grounds on which anything is 
certain, and also to the knowledge of the thing or its 
certainty, and is only the truth of that thing in itself. 
That a fact is, and that the fact is so conditioned that it 
may be known, are two quite different things. And so 
also, that a fact will be, or has been, is quite different 
from the fact that some being knows it. The certainty 
of truth is wholly independent of all grounds on which 
that certainty may be determined. Though no intellect 
knew, the certainty of being would not be thereby at all 
modified ; and no matter on what ground the certainty 
rests ;• necessity or contingency; that there is certainty 
makes both alike infallible. The future, that shall be, is 
equally certain as the past, that has been ; and the whole 
stream to come has its truth, as fully as the stream that 
has passed by. What events, all future actions of free 
causes shall produce, can have no greater certainty of 
truth when they shall already have come, than they have 
now. We may thus exclude all grounds of certainty and 
all knowledge of the fact, and may yet conceive that ao 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 339 

event is infallible in its true being, and which will be the 
conception of certainty of truth. 

Infallible truth of being may be somehow known, and 
we have in this, certainty of knoivledge. As already 
said, to God, this knowledge is independent of conditions. 
That there is the certainty of truth is enough that, to 
God, there should be absolute knowledge. But the 
human understanding can know facts only mediately and 
conditionally. Phenomena must be given in the sense, 
and connected in the notions of substance and cause in 
the understanding, or there can be no determined expe- 
rience ; and such experience must have its conditions, or 
we can judge nothing in reference to any future events. 
Our certainty of knowledge must, thus, rest upon the 
apprehension of the grounds of certainty. That there is 
the certainty of truth will be of no help to our knowledge, 
except as the conditions which form the ground of cer- 
tainty come into our apprehension ; and then the certainty 
of the knowledge is as the infallibility of the ground on 
which the facts rest. Thus, I may know that the radii 
of the same circle will always be equal to each other, 
but it will be certain knowledge only as I apprehend the 
ground of its certainty in the nature of the case ; the 
very conception of the circle itself. I may foreknow the 
certainty of natural events, but only as I know their 
ground in the connection of physical causes. I may 
know spontaneous events, but only as I know the hypo- 
thesis, which is to be their occasion, to be also an actual 
fact. And so, lastly, I may know the future action of 
free beings, but only as I know the conditions of their 



340 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

action in their disposition, temperament, and circumstan- 
ces. Certainty of truth will not give me certainty of 
knowledge, unless I also apprehend the grounds of this 
certainty; and my knowledge will be w r holly modified by 
these grounds. Certainty of knowledge cannot be the 
same in necessity as in contingency ; and of that grounded 
in necessity, there must be a difference of certainty 
between absolute, physical and hypothetical necessity. 
Though in all, there may be infallible certainty of truth ; 
yet in certainty of knowledge, the degree will vary as 
the apprehension of the grounds of certainty vary. 

When the grounds of certainty are apprehended by 
another, and we depend upon his testimony, we may 
have the assurance of faith. The highest assurance of 
faith differs from knowledge, in this point ; that know- 
ledge has the grounds of certainty in its own apprehen- 
sion, and faith is always through the medium of another's 
testimony. Confidence in the testimony may rise to what 
is termed the faith of assurance, so that there is no hesita- 
tion in resting the most important interests upon it ; but 
it is still faith, and cannot be knowledge. God may fore- 
tell the future, and the confidence in the prediction may 
be so strong, both from his knowledge, his power, and 
his veracity, that it may exclude all doubt ; and the faith 
may thus be " the substance of things hoped for, and the 
evidence of things not seen ;" yet the man can still only 
say, "I believe," and have no need to say "help my 
unbelief;" while he cannot strictly say, I know, until his 
faith is actually " swallowed up in vision." 



THE GROUNDS OF CERTAINTY. 341 

Thus we have certainty of truth, when the event is 
infallible in re; the certainty of knowledge, when the 
ground of certainty is apprehended ; and assurance of 
faith, when the confidence in the veracity of the testi- 
mony is unquestioned. Absolute truths, physical facts, 
and spontaneous events stand on different grounds of 
certainty ; but all in necessity, because all in their way 
are without an alternative, and unavoidable. Contingent 
events may have their infallible certainty, and may be 
foreknown in knowing their conditions ; but they never 
come within the sphere of necessity and ever stand upon 
the ground of responsibility, for they have their open 
alternative, and thus their avoidability. 



29^ 



CHAPTER HI. 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 

The animal body has its gravitating and chemical forces 
working within it. as in the case of all other material 
being ; and also its vital forces, like the rest of animated 
existences ; and has thus a physical efficiency as a com- 
ponent part of universal nature. But this physical 
efficiency, in working its effects, is as much of nature, 
and as little of the personal possession, as any of the 
ongoing causes and effects in the world around us, and 
does not need to be examined, in connection with the 
enquiry for man's competency to attain the end of his 
being. 

We have found the human mind to be a peculiar caus- 
ality ; a self-active, spiritual existence ; competent to 
originate wholly new things, and not merely to take on 
conditioned changes hi what already is, as the causes and 
effects in nature pass onward. It is a supernatural exist- 
ence, and has thus a power independent of nature, and 
competent to work in, upon, and against nature. It can 
originate an efficiency, that shall awake and direct mus- 
cular activity, and through the use of its own bodily 
members can modify matter, and make changes in the 
physical world. It can also hold communion with other 
minds, and from the originations of its own plans and 
purposes within, can throw its influence upon the mental 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 343 

world, and work its modifications in other spiritual exist- 
ences. But all this power of the human spirit, over 
matter and mind, has its limits. It is conditioned within 
its own sphere, and which is very limited compared with 
the omnipotence of the Absolute Spirit. This condition- 
ing and limiting, of the supernatural causality of the 
human spirit, may be from obstacles in outward nature 
too powerful for its counteraction ; or, it may be from 
hindrances within itself, which come from its own neglect 
or from its positive perversion. This spiritual efficiency 
it is, that we need to examine in its entire capabilities 
and hindrances, as it is only this efficiency which is con- 
cerned in the attainment of the end of human existence. 
If we confine the attention to the one point of the limi- 
tation of spiritual efficiency, we shall gain all we need the 
most directly, since by an undivided attention we shall 
get clearer views of the limitation of human power ; and 
having thus a complete view of human inability, from all 
sources of mental limitation, we shall in that have also the 
most completely within our vision, the whole field of human 
ability and direct personal responsibility. How is the 
human spirit limited in its efficiency ? And what bearing 
has this limitation, upon its competency and responsibility 
in attaining the end of its being ? It has already been 
said that the limiting of spiritual efficiency may be from 
obstacles in nature out of the spirit, and from hindrances 
which the spirit puts within itself. Both may be an infal- 
lible prevention to the attainment of many ends for which 
the spirit might act, but the first hindrance will be from 
without itself and thus excluding all moral accountar 



344 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

bility; and the second, being wholly from itself, will 
stand wholly chargeable to its own account. The end 
of spiritual being can be gained, notwithstanding all out- 
ward hindrance to efficiency; it is only the subjective 
hindrance, that can exclude the spirit from completely 
consummating the end of its being. The obstacles to 
efficiency in the first will give a natural inability ; and 
the subjective hindrances will be a moral inability ; both 
of which will be here adequately investigated. 

Section I. Natural inability.— The way is fully 
prepared, in the results of the preceding Chapter, to 
make an exact and universal discrimination between the 
two kinds of inability, natural and moral. The distinc- 
tion is not at all of degree, but of kind; the two differing 
as two distinct things, having each their own separate 
and peculiar identity. One cannot displace the other, 
nor be at all equivalent in meaning to the other. Natu- 
ral inability is a limitation of spiritual efficiency by neces- 
sity. When, in any case, an alternative is excluded 
and the event is unavoidable, it is an obstacle necessitai>- 
ing the spirit in its efficiency to one event, and making a 
natural inability to any other event. In every such case, 
there is a complete exclusion of all personal accountability. 
This may stand in each ground of certainty in necessity, 
as before attained, and will in each constitute a variety 
of the inability, but all of the same kind as natural 
inability. 

Spiritual efficiency may be hindered by absolute neces- 
sity. — Universal and necessary principles stand out quite 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 345 

beyond the sphere of efficient causes, and cannot be 
brought within the conditioning of any efficiency. The 
principle must control power, and not the power control 
principle. That, in which all power is from the very 
nature of the case limited, must subject to a necessity 
that is absolute. The spirit, as rational, is limited to the 
measure of its own reason ; and, that it should be able 
to nullify its own principles, would be the absurdity that 
reason should make itself to be unreasonable. As mathe- 
tician, the spirit cannot modify its own axioms ; as philo- 
sopher, the spirit cannot condition its own scientific laws ; 
and as moralist, the spirit cannot abrogate its own impe- 
ratives. The spiritual efficiency is thus necessarily held 
to all ultimate truth. 

The spirit has the capacity of will in liberty, only 
because, in knowing its own intrinsic dignity, it finds its 
ultimate rule, and is thus competent to hold itself against 
any end that may conflict with it. This will cannot, 
then, change its ultimate rule, for only in the apprehen- 
sion of such rule is there the capacity of will at all in 
being. As spiritual being, also, the spirit's own intrinsic 
excellency legislates, and this legislation is absolute, for 
the spirit goes to no authority out of itself; as spiritual 
activity, the spirit's competency to exclude all ends but 
its own legislation becomes a capacity 'of will, and is 
responsible to the legislator ; the will, as subject, cannot, 
therefore, rise above the absolute sovereign and meddle 
with his immutable laws. Both in the very nature of 
will, and also in the necessary subjection of will to respon 



346 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

sibility, there is a natural inability to modify the founda- 
tions of immutable morality. 

The will may be limited by physical necessity. — The 
human will, inasmuch as it is spiritual activity, is superna- 
tural ; and as such, it is a capacity to resist and modify 
nature. It is higher than nature, and cannot be crushed 
by nature ; but becomes servant to nature, in no case, 
except by its own consent. Still, though it cannot be 
coerced by nature, and may hold on to its own ends in 
spite of nature ; yet cannot it become the sovereign arbi- 
ter of nature. It can exclude nature from its own 
sphere, but cannot bring all of nature within its own 
sphere, and hold it there in subjection to its own purpo- 
ses. It may use nature in many things for its own pur- 
poses, but such use is comparatively limited, and such 
limitation is necessitated in physical causation. 

Nature is the product of supernatural efficiency. It 
is ; and, through all its incessant changes, it still goes 
on, ever the same identical existence in its real substan- 
tial being. Its ongoing adds nothing to itself, and drops 
nothing out of itself, but only perpetually varies the 
modes of its being. If anything is either new created 
or annihilated in the successions of nature, it is a mira- 
culous event, and must have come from a hand which 
holds nature in its power. Now, man may originate, and 
in this sense create new thoughts, new emotions, new 
purposes ; and these may in various ways make their 
modifications of nature, but they do not become incorpo- 
rated into nature. They are still the offspring of the 
human mind, and perpetuate themselves only within the 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 347 

realm of the spiritual, and make no additions to, nor sub- 
tractions from the realities of nature. Human efficiency 
is not competent to create nor to annihilate anything of 
nature, and has thus a natural inability to counteract 
any inherent law of nature. 

In the various modifications which man is competent 
to make in the ongoing of cause and effect in nature, it 
is rather by supplying occasions for nature to act differ- 
ently upon herself, than that his own efficiency is the 
producer. He puts one power of nature to act upon a 
different material, or in a different direction, from that in 
which the natural course of events was tending, and thus 
manages and combines and uses the powers of nature for 
his own ends. But in doing this, he must himself con- 
form to nature, and cannot make nature serve him in 
opposition to its own laws. And many powers of nature 
camiot be at all managed by him, but stand out wholly 
beyond the reach of all his efficiency. He may study 
and learn new and surprising ways of subjecting natural 
powers to his service, but he will ever find physical 
causes still too mighty for his control. In all such hin- 
drances there will be cases of natural inability. 

And even in cases of direct muscular action, and the 
combination of all practicable mechanical operations, by 
which immense masses of matter are detached and dis- 
placed, the power of man soon finds its limit against the 
gravitations and cohesions of nature. He may move 
certain things and not others; to a given degree and 
not beyond ; and though he may think how, with given 
engines and their place to stand, he could move the 



348 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

world, yet must his actual execution come far short of 
his ideal projections. His physical efficiency is weak- 
ness compared with the overwhelming forces of nature. 

Thus, in all creations and annihilations of nature ; in 
all modes of bringing nature to act upon herself; and in 
all direct counteraction of nature's forces ; man soon 
finds a limit to his efficiency, and comes to events that 
to him have no alternative. The efficiency of natural 
causation shuts out his volition in necessity, and he 
stands helpless from natural inability. 

The will may he limited in hypothetical necessity, 
— The spirit is self-active, and a cause for originating 
thought and sentiment as wholly new products. On 
occasion being given, spontaneously the spirit thinks and 
feels. But its spontaneous activity as knowing and feel- 
ing is conditioned by appropriate occasions. The spirit 
does not always think the same thoughts nor always feel 
the same emotions. Specific occasions, which lie in both 
the subjective state and the objective circumstances, 
must be supplied, or the spirit is not efficient for given 
thoughts and feelings. The occasions do not think and 
feel, nor do they cause the spirit to think and feel ; the 
whole efficiency is from the spirit ; but this efficiency 
does not become a cause for such products, except as the 
occasions are given. The spirit cannot conclude in a 
judgment without the requisite data, nor put forth a 
particular affection without the presence of the appro- 
priate object ; but when the occasion is given, it is the 
spirit which is the sole cause of the judgment or of the 
affection. In such occasion it spontaneously originated 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 349 

the new product, and was cause for that, and for nothing 
other than that. While spontaneous, it still has no alter- 
native. It is a cause causing, without being a cause 
caused ; but the presence of one occasion and the absence 
of all others, gives no alternative to the originating, and to 
the origination of just that product. All is hypothecated 
to the presence of the appropriate occasion, and when 
that is, the spirit is efficient for such a judgment, or such 
an affection, and the product is given in complete spon- 
taneity. The conditioning is solely through the occasion, 
and not at all by a physical causing ; it is thus unavoid- 
able and in necessity, and the event without alternative, 
and thus to the spirit there is a natural inability to any 
other issue. 

The above covers all the varieties of necessity, and 
thus all the grounds of certainty in which there is no 
alternative, and in this comprehends all possible cases 
of natural inability. The event is strictly unavoidable 
by the spirit, and thus entirely beyond the domain of 
will in liberty, and in this view is wholly destitute of all 
personal responsibility. So far as the occasion depends 
upon a volition, in hypothetical natural inability, there is 
indirect responsibility ; but this responsibility is solely at 
the point of the voluntariness, and where there was an 
alternative ; when that point has been passed, all merges 
in necessity, against which there is a natural inability, 
and under which there is no ethical responsibility. 
Natural inability cannot come within the constraint of an 
imperative. 



30 



350 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

Section II. Moral inability. — This is always a 
hindrance within the sphere of a complete contingency. 
It knows nothing of any form of necessity, and has, in its 
strongest hindrance, a full and open alternative. The 
event is not excluded because its exclusion was unavoid- 
able ; but solely because, from some hindrance within the 
spirit itself, the event was not secured though it might 
have been. We need not attempt to give all the forms 
of moral, as before in the case of natural inability. They 
all come within the one form of contingency, and find 
their hindrance within the spirit itself, and their modifi- 
cations need only to be illustrated by some prominent 
examples. 

The spirit may be hindered by a strong desire. — When 
an agreeable object is presented to the animal suscepti- 
bility, a craving, as a desire, is awakened, and the impul- 
sive prompting is direct to an executive act in gratifica- 
tion. Such impulse may be of any degree in strength, 
from some faint appetite up to the strongest passion. 
Were there nothing but the animal nature, Ihere would 
be no alternative to the strongest impulse, and what was 
deemed the highest happiness must govern the action 
in necessity. In such case here could be no moral 
accountability. 

But in the human being, the spirit may apprehend a 
direct prohibition to this animal gratification, in the claim 
of its own excellency, and thus the rules of greatest hap- 
piness and highest worthiness may seem to be in direct 
collision. To one who well knows all the conditions in 
which such a mind is placed, both subjective and objec- 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 351 

tive, it might be foreseen, as a certainty that this man 
would gratify the desire and violate the imperative. 
Quite strong language might be here applied in express- 
ing the certainty of the event, and the man may say of 
him ; I foresee that his passion will overpower him ; that 
under its power he cannot control himself; that he can 
not resist such a temptation ; but in all such expressions, 
we mean only to include the certainty of the prevalence 
of passion, and not that the gratification was unavoidable. 
We recognize a full and open alternative, though we 
speak so strongly of inability, and feel no impropriety hi 
any application of terms expressing guilt and moral 
responsibility to the sensualist. The spiritual end in 
worthiness ought to have ruled, and we know might have 
been taken ; and no matter how high the passion, and 
the certainty in his case that it would prevail, nor how 
emphatically we say he could not resist it; we never 
mean by it that an alternative was shut out, and that the 
guilty gratification was a necessity. The inability did 
not stand in any ground of necessity, and was only a 
moral inability, as wholly a different thing from all natural 
inability. A regard to human infirmity may induce us 
to palliate an offence committed under strong temptation, 
but in our strongest apology we shall not speak of it, nor 
judge of it, as of an event that had no alternative and 
was wholly unavoidable. If we allow ourselves to get a 
full view of all the truth, that the very force of the tempta- 
tion gave an occasion for higher virtue, and more exalted 
dignity, in manfully resisting and expelling it ; and that 
a thousand offered helps were near, making a way of 



352 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

escape that he might be able to bear it ; we should be 
more likely, in our consciences, to hold him to a rigid 
responsibility than to plead for him apologies and pallia- 
tions. The strongest desire against the claims of duty 
will never make a necessity; but, the very fact, that 
duty is set over against desire, opens an alternative ; 
indicates a spiritual and not merely animal being ; and 
installs a will in liberty, that should be, and will be, held 
accountable. Its highest certainties are in contingency, 
not necessity. 

A hindrance from balanced desires. — Animal desires 
may often counterwork each other, and while the impulse 
from both is strong, and the two presented gratifications 
are of nearly equal degrees, there may be much hesita- 
tion. An exigency, in which great interests are so 
nearly balanced as to confuse the judgment, and yet 
where a prompt and decided conclusion must be formed, 
may very painfully perplex and very violently agitate the 
mind. The man may express his hesitation very strongly 
by saying, ' I cannot make up my mind' ; ' I cannot 
choose between them.' Animal impulse is under neces- 
sity, and the strongest must carry, unavoidably; and. 
perhaps, if a perfect equilibrium of desire could be 
induced and kept up, it might be a necessity that the 
animal should stand between its objects of equal desire, 
and take neither. But not thus with a rational spirit. 
A reference of each to the end of his worthiness will 
bring hi an ethical claim on one side, and reveal that 
one is imperative as well as desirable. Even if we could 
conceive of two objects of equal desire and equal duty, 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 353 

one only of which could be taken, then one only would 
be duty, and the indignity that the man should perpetu- 
ally stand between them, and make himself an animal, 
would constrain him soon to cut short all hesitation and 
even blindly take either, rather than longer stand with 
none. No such position holds man in any necessity. 
The claim of his own excellency comes in and settles the 
object to be taken, or, that in the absence of sufficient 
grounds for a decision which, the mind make to itself a 
ground, and say ' first seen first taken,' and fulfil the 
duty in taking one, rather than, in the suspense, do 
wrong by rejecting both. All inability in such decision 
is moral inability, contingent and avoidable. 

Hindrance to desultory impulses from the governing 
purpose. — When a purpose is fully fixed on the attain- 
ment of some remote end, there necessarily intervenes a 
great variety of subordinate acts in the fulfilment of the 
main purpose. When all the process passes on equably 
and uninterruptedly, the subordinate acts go out sponta- 
neously under the control of the main purpose, and the 
general plan proceeds on to its consummation. But it 
may often happen that appetites and interests shall, in the 
meantime, be awakened in conflict with the main purpose. 
Great inducements may arise to turn aside from the 
grand end, and do that which is quite inconsistent with 
it. The strong desultory influence is to gratify this sud- 
denly excited passion, and for the time forget the main 
end in view. But under the most impulsive passions 
and the strongest bribes to withdraw the attention and 
energy from the mam pursuit, the governing purpose may 

30* 



854 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

be so firm and constant to its end, that the awakened 
passion does not take hold, and the will does not at all 
go out after it. In such case it may be strongly said, 
1 nothing can make him forget his purpose ;' ' it is impos- 
sible to draw him aside from his chosen object." 

But it is manifest here, that the hindrance to nature 
is in the will itself. The appetite strongly awakened 
would at once go out in executive acts, and gratify the 
craving desire, but the strong will watches it, and guards 
against it, and thus hinders it from all interference with 
its own end. Not nature here hinders will, but will holds 
nature in check, and thus, of course, the strongest asser- 
tions of inability and impossibility can be only of a moral 
kind. That purpose can relax its tension ; that watchful 
decision may become sluggish and careless ; and thus 
appetite work the hindrance or defeat of the mam pur- 
pose. It is only because the will has taken one alterna- 
tive so strongly, that appetite has not before this con- 
quered ; the other side is still open, and a voluntary 
effort must constantly be made or that will be taken. 

Inability to change the governing disposition. — In all 
cases of a settled governing purpose, there is a state of 
will directed to its mam end ; and then, many subordi- 
nate volitions to carry into execution this main purpose. 
It would be absurd to suppose, that the subordinate voli- 
tion should change the governing purpose ; that an execu- 
tive volition should reverse a state of will ; since the 
former, in both cases is only prompted and determined 
in the latter. The radical disposition is the spirit itself, 
disposed in a direction to an ultimate end of all action. 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY* 355 

It must be comprehensive of all on one or the other side 
of worthiness and happiness ; or, which is the same thing, 
of duty and gratification ; God and mammon. When in 
the first direction, the disposition is righteous ; when in 
the second, it is depraved. The radical disposition is 
thus a governing purpose, differing from other governing 
purposes in this, that it is ultimate and comprehensive, 
while the most general of others is still partial and con- 
cluded by a higher end. It would thus be the same 
absurdity, as above, to suppose that a radical disposition 
could be changed by any action of an executive will. 
The spirit itself, disposed on the ultimate end of its 
attainment, must carry all its executive agency in that 
direction. 

There is thus a hindrance to all change or reversing 
of the disposition, in the very comprehensiveness of acti- 
vity included in the disposition. The entire spiritual 
activity is directed to its ultimate end ; and as righteous, 
the spiritual activity goes out in duty ; or, as depraved^ 
the immortal energy of the spirit bows itself in the bond- 
age of making gratified appetite its end. The strength 
of this disposition may be of indefinite degrees, on either 
side ; but on both sides, of whatever strength, it is com- 
prehensive of the entire spiritual activity. If on worthi- 
ness ; it is completely righteous, though not as perfect in 
strength as it might be : and if on happiness, it is totally 
depraved, though not as strong in its depravity as it may 
be. And now, this wholesoulness of disposition may be 
expressed in strong language, on both sides ; by saying 
of the righteous, "he cannot sin ;" and of the depraved, 



356 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

"ye cannot serve the Lord:" and may indeed be 
expressed by allusions to, and comparisons with, physical 
necessity ; as when we say of a Washington, ' the sun 
may as well turn in his course ;' or, of the incorrigibly 
wicked, " can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard 
his spots, then may ye also who are accustomed to do evil, 
learn to do well." But in none of these strong expres- 
sions, though likened in certainty to physical necessity, 
do we include a natural inability. 

If we conceived the spirit to stand connected in the 
causalities of nature, and that its disposition was itself an 
effect of a physical efficiency wrought into it, then would 
it come within physical necessity and be unavoidable, and 
like all cases without an alternative, be a natural inability. 
Nature would have to turn itself back upon its old course, 
when nature is only causality going on in one course. 
But since we know spirit as the supernatural, and com- 
petent to originate its own disposing ; we may well con- 
ceive that when it has its disposition, good or bad, there 
is still the alternative open to both, and neither the good 
disposition nor the bad disposition are henceforth inevit- 
able. The good spirit has still its animal appetites, and 
the way is open to passionate impulses ; the depraved 
spirit has still the conscious apprehension of what is due 
to itself, as spirit, and feels the pressure of obligation to 
reassert its own sovereignty over the appetites, and the 
w r ay is open to do so ; and hence, with all the certainty 
on either side, that both the righteous and the depraved 
will persevere in their old disposition, it is not a certainty 
grounded in any necessity, but a certainty in full contin- 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 357 

gency and avoidability, and hence admitting only of a 
moral inability. 

The enquiry may here be made, Why apply this term 
inability to two so distinct cases ? or, indeed, why apply 
the term inability at all to the mere self-hindrances of 
action, when it is plainly practicable that the hindrance 
the man himself makes, he himself can remove ? We 
answer, that in the case of going against a radical dispo- 
sition, or of changing that disposition, the deep conscious- 
ness of moral impotence in the human mind will never 
be satisfied to clothe its conviction, in any other form 
than that of directly expressed inability. A sense of 
great guilt, and of great danger, may press upon the 
spirit in the conviction of its perverse and depraved dis- 
position, and the man may know and own his responsi- 
bility for every moment's delay to "put off the old, and 
to put on the new man," and yet be deeply conscious that 
his spirit has so come to love its bondage, and to hate 
its duty, that he can only adequately express his sense 
of his helplessness by emphatically saying 4 I cannot 
change ;' ' I find myself utterly helpless ; M I am sold 
under sin ;' i some one else must help me, for I cannot 
help myself.' The deep conviction cannot rest in any 
weaker expressions. 

And where strong appetites, desires and passions, 
prompt to action, and the man speaks out from the full- 
ness of his heart the difficulty he finds in restraining 
from gratification ; or, when he is under the deep con- 
viction of a depraved disposition and the obligation to 
return to righteousness, and he spontaneously utters the 



358 THE COMPETENCY OF BOND TO ITS EXD. 

deep sense of his helplessness, he -will naturally and cer- 
tainly use the strong expressions of inability and impo- 
tence. It is no hyperbole, but honest, felt conviction. 
Inability may have its primary meaning in necessity, but 
when the deep hindrance to action is in the will itself, 
and the disposition reluctates all agency but in the line 
to its own end, and thus the inability is wholly of a moral 
kind, still the consciousness of weakness, in promptly 
effecting so thorough a reformation as the worthiness of 
the spirit demands, will infallibly secure the application 
of the terms implying inability to many cases of contin- 
gency only. Nor does the use of such language mislead 
us. The perceived nature of the case readily furnishes 
the proper interpretation, and we know at once from the 
subject given, whether the inability is in inevitable 
necessity or avoidable contingency. It would be a vain 
labor to attempt to preclude any fancied danger of ambi- 
guity, by excluding all use of inability in cases of moral 
hindrance. 

All books, the Bible itself, will give multiplied exam- 
ples of such expressions, and except through some per- 
version of a speculative or dogmatic interest, there will 
be no liability to misapprehension. When God says to 
Lot, " Haste thee, escape thither ; for I cannot do any 
thing till thou be come thither;" — Gen. xix. 22, we 
need have no fear that common sense will ever mistake 
it, as if God was denying his own omnipotence. So of 
the following, no mistake can be made. The brethren 
of Joseph " hated him, and could not speak peaceably 
unto him." — Gen. xxxvii, 4. iC My children are with 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 359 

me in bed, I cannot rise and give thee." — Luke xi, 7. 
"I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come." 
■ — Luke xiv, 20. And just as little will plain common 
sense mistake the following, and make them to be natural 
inability, grounded in necessity, without some previous 
perversion. " Joshua said unto the people, ye cannot 
serve the Lord, for he is a holy God." — Josh, xxiv, 19. 
" No man can come to me, except the Father which hath 
sent me draw him." — John, vi, 44. "Having eyes full 
of adultery and which cannot cease from sin." — 2 Pet. 
ii, 14. The real distinction between the applications 
of inability is preserved by the qualifications of natural 
and moral ; and the fact of necessity and irresponsibility 
in the first, and of avoidability and accountability in the 
last, makes the two to be permanently and consciously 
diverse from each other. 

Section III. Cases where natural and moral 

INABILITY ARE MORE EASILY CONFOUNDED. In all Cases 

of doubtful meaning, the ground of certainty is the crite- 
rion. If that be in any form of necessity, the case is one 
of natural inability ; and if the ground of certainty be 
found only in the conditions in the spirit itself, and thus 
leaving an alternative open and the event avoidable, the 
most emphatic expression of inability is still only of a 
moral kind. The subject in hand will ordinarily deter- 
mine, very readily, to which kind the particular case 
belongs, and yet in some cases there is much more lia- 
bility of confounding the two from the want of a complete 
analysis of the mental facts. 



860 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

The inability of constitutional and of spiritual suscep- 
tibility may be often mistaken. — Both the animal and 
rational susceptibilities Ave have found to be given, and 
their action determined, in constitutional nature. They 
are themselves conditioned in a previous fact, and can 
find no alternative. In such conditions the susceptibility 
must have such emotions, and the conditions are already 
given beyond any control of the mind itself. No matter 
whether the case be one of physical or hypothetical neces- 
sity, they are both alike unavoidable and the event stands 
beyond all accountableness in natural inability. 

But the spiritual susceptibility is conditioned wholly in 
the spiritual disposition. The disposition being given, the 
feeling is as much determined in necessity as in a constitu- 
tional susceptibility, and is, in that point, held in natural 
inability. But the disposition itself, as a determining con- 
dition of the emotion, is not unavoidable. The person is 
held responsible for the whole disposing of the spiritual 
activity, and may thus be properly held responsible for 
all the feelings which are determined in it. It is natural 
inability no farther than being necessitated in the dispo- 
sition, and no matter how intense the certainty that the 
disposition will not be changed, the fact that it may be, 
since there is an open alternative, throws the whole action 
of the spiritual susceptibility, which depends upon it, 
within the sphere of only a moral inability. The import- 
ance of this distinction is very great. Some feelings are 
necessitated, and the man should not stand accountable 
for them; others are necessitated only in a condition 
which is itself avoidable, and are thus as properly a 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 361 

matter of responsibility as the disposition that conditions 
them. When the man knows the line between natural 
and moral inability here, he will know also just where he 
is accountable for his affections. 

Inability from constitutional temperament, and that 
from a spiritual disposition. — The constitutional tem- 
perament is determined in the physical organization, and 
gives its peculiar characteristics to the man permanently 
through life. Voluntary control may modify and restrain 
the promptings of the temperament, but no force of will 
can make the man of one temperament to be like the 
man of a different temperament. Peter's sanguine, and 
Paul's choleric temperament gave their peculiarities to 
each Apostle, and made them to be very different men 
through life. The whole action of temperament, except 
only in its watchful restraint, is in necessity and subjects 
to a natural inability. 

The moral disposition, as already seen, is avoidable, 
and all the determination which is thus given to feeling 
and action is in contingency, and all the certainty con- 
nected with its events stands only in a moral inability. 
A miserly or an ambitious disposition may be in connec- 
tion with a constitutional temperament very agreeable, 
or very disagreeable, but the whole demerit of his moral 
character is in his disposition, and his amiable or disar 
greeable temperament has no more connection with re- 
sponsible character than the mildness of the lamb, or the 
ferocity of the tiger. A good man may have a constitu- 
tional temperament far less mild and amiable than some 
very vicious men, and yet this should never be deemed 

31 



362 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

to detract from his real goodness, nor does the naturally 
amiable disposition of a bad" man at all palliate the 
depravity of his moral disposition. The want of due. 
discrimination in these respects leads often to very unjust 
estimates of human character, and on one side underval- 
ues the virtue, and on the other, underrates the vice, of 
the radical disposition. There is a natural inability in 
the conditioning of temperament ; the determining of 
moral disposition has only a moral inability. 

Inability in changing character, and that of chang- 
ing the outward conduct. — The true character is as the 
radical disposition, and can be changed, only in a change 
of the disposition. The outward conduct may vary at 
will, but the inward character be all the while unchanged. 
A moral inability only prevents the change of character 
or of conduct, but that any change of conduct should 
change the character is a natural inability. The conduct 
springs from the disposition, and must be estimated 
accordingly, and no merely executive acts can reach 
back and transform the disposition. The disposition 
must first be right, in order that the conduct may be 
morally approved, and not that the conduct, being con- 
strained, will bring the disposition to be right. 

A man may rob me by violence, or make a show of 
kindness to cheat me the more securely, and with the 
same disposition in each case. The devil is as truly 
malevolent in " transforming himself into an angel of 
light," as in " going about like a roaring lion ;" for in 
both cases there is the disposition " seeking whom he may 
devour." Yea, the man may constrain the conduct, and 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 363 

control the whole outward life, from regard to reputation, 
from self-righteous zeal, or from the mistaken conception 
that he can so reform his character, and nothing but 
moral difficulties will be found in his way ; but no such 
constrained action can at all modify character, for in the 
necessity of the case, the outward act can be no deter- 
miner of the inward disposition. 

In the same way, desultory impulses may carry the 
outward conduct contrary to the governing disposition, 
and yet in such outer acting there is truly no change of 
character. A pirate may be touched with sudden sym- 
pathy for some interesting sufferer, and give in charity 
the very money which he has murdered others to get, 
and yet keep the disposition that will murder others for 
money to-morrow. And so, on the other hand, a good 
man may, perhaps, sometimes give from mere sympathy 
or from habit, or from policy, and in the act there may 
be no merit, because in it there was really no prompting 
of the righteous disposition. Yea, even a good man may, 
like Peter, deny his Lord through sudden fear, while his 
disposition is radically unchanged. There is great sin in 
the act, for the disposition should have been so strong as 
to overcome any colliding passion, but if the seed of the 
good disposition remains within, and the faith truly does 
not fail, he cannot sin as a rebel and an enemy, but only 
as an infirm and unstable disciple. The first look, that 
wakes the real disposition and draws out the true cha- 
racter, will bring bitter tears and godly sorrow. A bad 
man can do nothing truly good, for the evil disposition 
characterises all that springs from it, and whatever comes 



364 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

from impulses of humanity are without any moral root. 
A good man may do much that is wrong, but it will be 
his infirmity. He will condemn and loathe himself for 
it, and mourn over the weakness of his character, but he 
will still be conscious that his prevailing disposition has 
not changed. The wicked man should not say, ' I am 
delivered to do these abominations ;' ' I cannot do good, 
and therefore am content to do evil.' Rather should he 
say, ' I can do nothing good with such a depraved dispo- 
sition ; here is a natural inability ; I will therefore dispose 
my spirit anew, and attain to a righteous disposition, for 
to this there is nothing but a moral hindrance, and thus 
nothing to weaken the fact of constant obligation.' Nor 
should or will the good man say, ' I cannot change my 
character without changing my disposition, therefore I 
will be careless of all desultory impulses ;' but rather, 
4 such impulses prevail through too yielding and infirm 
a disposition, and they stain and pollute the character 
with grievous offences, I will therefore set my spirit more 
firmly on the right, and deepen the current of my pre- 
vailing disposition towards godliness.' 

Sometimes there may be mistaken the case of an abso- 
lute necessity, in an intrinsic absurdity, for a moral 
inability. — Thus the Apostle Paul declares, that " the 
carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject 
to the law of God, neither indeed can be." — Rom. viii, 
7. This may be often so misunderstood, as if the subjec- 
tion to the law of God was an inability to the spirit itself; 
and might be interpreted as a natural inability in some 
form of necessity ; or, by others, as a moral inability that 



NATURAL AND MORAL INABILITY. 365 

is avoidable. But the truth is, that neither is meant, 
inasmuch as the avoidability of a carnal mind is not the 
point in view, but the great fact that a carnal disposition 
cannot be a loyal disposition. It is essential enmity, and 
whatever form it may take, while it is a carnal mind 
there can be no true subjection to God's law. If it 
obeys at all, it will be from fear or hope ; from a selfish 
regard ; and thus at the best mere legality and not loy- 
alty. It is the intrinsic absurdity and thus the absolute 
inability, that carnality, which is enmity, should itself 
obey God from love. 

So, again, the same Apostle says, " the natural man 
receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are 
foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because 
they are spiritually discerned." — 1 Cor. ii, 14. The 
same mistake may be made here, as above ; as if it were 
affirmed that there was an inability in the man to change 
from a natural to a spiritual state, and which some might 
affirm was a natural, others a moral inability. But the 
point is not whether a natural man can become a spiritual 
man, but the affirmation that a natural man, as such, can 
not have spiritual discernment; the intrinsic absurdity 
that he, who has had only carnal experiences, should 
know anything of the truly christian experience. Natu- 
ral discernment cannot be spiritual discernment; an 
intrinsic absurdity, just as when it is said " ye cannot 
serve God and mammon." You cannot be, nor do, two 
opposite things at the same time. 

The whole matter of human inability thus resolves 
itself into the two kinds of hindrance ; one, in any kind 

31* 



366 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

of necessity, is a natural inability, without alternative, 
unavoidable, and wholly irresponsible ; the other, always 
in contingency and avoidable, and thus wholly responsi- 
ble, no matter how certain the events may be from the 
conditions within the spirit itself, and therefore a moral 
inability. The natural inability can interpose no hind- 
rance to the man's attaining the end of his being ; for 
the end of worthiness is solely for the spirit itself to 
assume ; and to this, nature can oppose no barriers that 
become such, except through the assent of the spirit 
itself. The moral inability ; which is a hindrance in the 
very spirit itself, and eclipsing all its dignity ; making 
it to become unworthy ; this only can keep the soul of 
man from reaching its goal, and attaining the consumma- 
tion of that for which it has had its being. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE HUMAN MIND AS AN AGENT. 

The single facts of mind have been attained, and appre« 
hended in their connections and reciprocal relations, and 
have also been analyzed into their simple elements. We 
have, moreover, found them in their organic combination 
according to the revelation- of consciousness in our own 
experience, and have thus the human mind as a whole, 
and may contemplate it as an entire being, in reference 
to the ends that are designed to be consummated in it. 
Farther, we have considered the whole subject of caus- 
ality and efficiency ; the grounds of certainty in refer- 
ence to all events ; and the distinctions of natural and 
moral inability in reference to human action. We are 
thus prepared to take the human mind entire as an agent, 
and know the whole sphere in which it is competent to 
put forth its activity. 

That we may attain this the more completely, we will 
first look separately at the sphere of man's animal nature, 
and determine the peculiarities of its agency ; then, to 
fch^e sphere of man's rational being, and the higher 
agency there exerted ; and lastly, to the whole in combi- 
nation, as reciprocally modified one by the other. We 
may thus have both a distinct and comprehensive know- 
ledge of human agency, and of the entire sphere which 
it was designed the human mind should fill* 



368 the competency of mind to its end. 

Section 1. Man, in a certain sphere, acts as 
the animal. — We never find man excluded wholly 
from his rational being, and thus acting solely as a 
brute. In his most sensual activity, there is that which 
evinces the posession of higher faculties, and this higher 
prerogative always modifies the mere life of the animal. 
But the whole animal activity is still so distinct in its 
nature and end from the spiritual being of man, that it 
is competent to us to abstract the modifying influence of 
the rational, and regard man as solely animal agent. 
We may find him, in most particulars, above other ani- 
mals in the perfection and strength of his faculties, and 
in all combined, that he is the most complete of the 
entire animal creation ; but no augmentation of degree 
will at all take him out of the sphere of mere brute 
existence. He is still the fellow to the creatures of the 
stall and the stye. 

In the intellectual capacity, as animal, there is the 
full provision given for attaining all the phenomena that 
belong to the sensible world. All the Qualities which 
are perceived through any organ of sense, and all the 
mental phenomena, as the exercises of the mind itself, 
which may in any way come within consciousness, are 
wholly within the reach of the human mind. Some 
animals may have a quicker and keener sense than man. 
and some peculiar instincts are given to some of even 
the lower animals, but in general it may be said, that all 
the activity which belongs to animal perception is in its 
most complete degree the possession of man. And far 
more perfectly than any other animal can man exercise 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 369 

the connecting operations of the understanding. The 
experience of the man, in bringing the changing pheno 
mena of the sense within the concluded judgments of the 
understanding, must be far more orderly and extensive 
than any brute experience can reach. The deductions 
from past experience are far more conclusive and com- 
prehensive than in the case of other animals. Brutes 
can, and do, draw general conclusions from objects of 
sense, and thus learn what is useful and prudent, but 
the generalizations of man, though of the same kind here 
as the brute, are much broader and clearer, and hence 
he may be a wiser and safer economist than any other 
animal. This capacity for perceiving, and judging 
according to what has thus been perceived in the sense, 
is the whole extent of the animal endowment as knowing, 
and in all this knowledge man is pre-eminent. He can 
thoroughly commune with the brute in all its ways of 
knowing, and is, thus, truly animal. 

In common with the brute, man has the whole sphere 
of the animal susceptibility, and knows how to commingle 
feelings with the animal in all its appetites and their 
gratification. The social and dissocial propensities, the 
sympathies in joy and suffering, the natural affections 
which hold the parents to their offspring, all come out 
the same in kind on the field of human and animal expe- 
rience. The feeling that appropriates possessions, and 
gives to animals an interest in things and places, and 
induces to the formation of habits, is more completely 
developed in man, though still of the same kind as in the 
brute. The sentient nature of man and animal is thus 



370 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

the same, and man is no more kindred to the animal in a 
certain sphere of knowing, than he is in a common sphere 
jf feeling. 

All this capacitates man for an impulsive activity. 
His sentient capacity opens in appetites and their wants, 
and the impulse of all appetite is to go out in action after 
the object of gratification. The sole end of appetite is 
satiety in the enjoyment, and then the whole activity 
rests, until nature again stimulates the appetite to repeat 
the same activity for the same end. The end of animal 
life is happiness, and the whole activity is a blind impulse, 
going out unavoidably in its conditions after its end. 
There may be deductions from past experience, which 
modify future action ; and the animal, having learned to 
be prudent, may act quite differently in the same outward 
conditions. But this prudential consideration is a new 
condition, and itself just as impulsive as the appetite, 
and restraining and controlling it by the same law of 
highest happiness, and thus the animal goes after the 
prudent by the same law of necessity as before. The 
strongest prompting is already determined in the consti- 
tutional nature, and the objects awakening the impulse 
are conditioned in their order by the ongoing of surround- 
ing nature, and thus, to the animal, there is no alterna- 
tive to the order of its activity. Each event is, in its 
condition, unavoidable. 

Man is, therefore, an agent, in his animal being, act- 
ing as the brute does solely for enjoyment ; and though 
from his broader experience and wider generalizations, 
competent to take hold on higher prudential considera- 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 371 

tions than any other animal, yet is this a difference of 
degree only, and leaving the higher prudential prompting 
to be equally as impulsive as any other animal feeling. 
In this sphere of activity there is an entire exclusion of 
all proper will, and thus of all liberty and responsibility. 

Section II. Man is also a rational agent — 
Superinduced upon the animal nature, in its capacity of 
the sense and the understanding judging according to 
sense, and which also has a susceptibility to all animal feel- 
ing, there is the high prerogative of a rational and spiritual 
existence. In the possession of reason, man is competent 
to apply necessary and universal principles, for expound- 
ing and comprehending all the perceptions of the sense 
and the judgments of the understanding. In this sphere 
he rises above the natural, and is truly supernatural. He 
not only knows what is given in experience, but attains 
principles which are prior to, and conditional for, experi- 
ence, and thus can make experience itself the subject of 
his philosophy. He can, moreover, apply the principles 
of taste to nature, and determine how far nature is beau- 
tiful ; and also the principles of science to nature, and 
determine how far nature is philosophical ; and can thus 
make his reason the absolute measure of nature, in art 
and philosophy. In addition to all this, he can know 
himself, as spiritual, and determine therein an ultimate 
rule of right for his action towards others, and his claims 
on other's activity towards him, and in this comprehend 
the whole sphere of morals. 



872 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

This capacity for rational knowledge is occasion, also, 
for a rational susceptibility, and man is competent to 
exercise feeling in the spheres of art, science, and morals. 
The emotions awakened by the beautiful and the sublime : 
the feelings inspired by philosophy ; and the moral obli- 
gations and emotions which originate in the imperatives 
of conscience ; all these transcend the highest experience 
of animal nature, and are possible to man only as he is 
a rational spiritual agent. In all these departments of 
knowledge and feeling he is competent, also, to find an 
absolute rule within himself, and thus to direct his action 
by his own law, and exclude all other ends from holding 
dominion over him; and in this self-direction he pos- 
sesses truly a will in libertj, and has an alternative to 
all the impulses of nature. 

Section III. This agency of the animal and 

THE RATIONAL 13 COMBINED, IN MAN, IN PERPETUAL 

unity. — The animal, in man, does not stand in complete 
isolation, as mere brute ; nor does the rational stand 
completely separate, as pure spirit ; but animal and 
rational, sense and spirit, so combine in unity that both 
make one personality. One life is in the whole, and one 
law of development controls all, so that we say of man, 
both animal and spiritual, he is yet but one being. In 
this respect, the human differs, on one side from the 
brutal, and on the other side from the angelic life. Thev 
are so combined in unity as to be neither purely, but 
each is so modified by the other that the whole is a third 
thing not identical with either. 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 373 

It might be an interesting examination, and yet, as it 
must be mainly speculation, not appropriate here, to 
determine the origin of this rational superinduction upon 
the animal. Is reason a propagation as truly as the 
animal being ? Were all spiritual rudiments in humanity 
given in the first of the race, and are all souls a traduc- 
tion from Adam ? Is it not rather propagation only so 
far as the animal, and a perpetual divine superinducing, 
in each case, so far as the spiritual being is concerned ? 
Must not flesh be born of flesh, and spirit be a spiritual 
superinduction solely*? Is there not some help in the con- 
ception each way, in considering how the Lord Jesus 
Christ could be human and divine in one person, which 
would be truly animal, spiritual, and divine in one ; and 
how man can be animal and spiritual, in one person ? 
May not, yea must not, the rational be as truly a super- 
natural putting on to the animal, as was the divine to the 
human ? But however such questioning may be solved, 
this is true, that the man can in no way act solely as the 
brute, any more than the Divine Mediator could act 
solely as a man. The two in union go to make the pecu- 
liar one, and any separation of the two at once annihi- 
lates the peculiar third thing. The conception of the 
two agencies separately, is not then, by any means, a 
conception of human agency. The personality of the 
man is the synthesis of both, and as human agent, he 
must be animal and spiritual reciprocally modified. 
Neither his intellect, susceptibility nor will, can be like 
either those of the brute or of the angel ; his knowledge, 
feeling, and willing must be sui generis, that is, solely 

32 



374 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

human knowing, feeling and willing. We cannot speak of 
animal happiness for man, as if such happiness could be 
solely the gratification of appetite as in the mere brute. 
The man cannot make happiness his end, and gratify 
■want, solely as an animal does. He has also a spiritual 
being, and his very spirit, as a reigning disposition and 
permanent will, enters into his appetitive cravings, and 
takes up their gratification as an end of life. The ani- 
mal gratifies from natural impulse ; the man goes after 
carnal pleasure as a chosen object, and puts the activity 
of his spiritual will into his voluptuousness. Nor, on 
the other hand, can we speak of angelic holiness or sin 
as belonging to man, for man cannot stand towards the 
ultimate rule of right, and come to its fulfilment or vio- 
lation as the angel does. His subjection of the animal 
nature to the demand of his spirit necessarily enters 
into his virtue ; and the bowing of the spirit in bondage 
to the animal nature necessarily enters into his sin ; but 
the angel is not also animal, and cannot therefore have 
either holiness or sin in the forms of human holiness and 
sin. The moral character of the human must be pecu- 
liar, inasmuch as his constitutional being, and his attitude 
towards the ultimate rule of right, is peculiar — a com- 
pound of the animal and the spiritual. 

Man cannot have purely soul-holiness, nor exclusively 
soul-sin ; for his spirit can never act but as modified in 
its agency by " the law in the members. " The rever- 
ence, and humility, and love, of the spirit, will partici- 
pate in the animal feeling that is accordant with such 
emotions ; and the pride, and envy, and malice of the 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 375 

soul, will be tinctured with a selfishness that has its 
sympathies in the wants of the flesh. Even in the spirit- 
world, the exercises of the human soul must still retain 
the modifications of its sensual experience, and the scrip- 
ture-doctrine of a resurrection determines some kind of 
coporeal existence forever. Human worship will differ 
from angelic, and human blasphemy from the demoniac, 
for something of the animal must ever blend itself with 
the activities of the spiritual. 

We do not need to examine the peculiar activity of 
purely spiritual being, because humanity is not, and is 
not to be, purely spiritual. Both with angels and espe- 
cially with God, will in liberty must differ from human 
will. All spirit, finite or absolute, will know itself, and 
know the claim upon itself that all its activity be in the 
end of its own worthiness ; but the colliding influences 
which hinder such direction to the activity will widely 
differ in man, angels, and God. An angel, from his 
finiteness, is open to appeals from ambition, and may 
greatly debase himself by seeking unduly to exalt him- 
self, and thus " lifted up of pride, he falls into the con- 
demnation of the devil." " God cannot be tempted of 
evil," for he is above all sources of influence that would 
urge to any activity in disparagement of his own glory. 
No inducement that he should disregard his own dignity, 
and thus " deny himself," can reach to him. His will is 
serene and tranquil, and never knows any colliding and 
disturbing motives. But quite otherwise is it with the 
will of man. His animal nature, even when brought into 
subjection, must be constantly guarded ; for at any hour 



376 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

passions may rise, that unrestrained will lead to ruin. 
His spirit may have the temptations of ambition ; because 
he, like an angel, is finite ; but in addition to spiritual 
pride, he is open through all the senses to worldly pomp 
and " the pride of life." Spiritual ambition will have also 
its carnal desires, and demoniac malice will be accompa- 
nied by brutal lust. Not pure spiritual agency, finite or 
infinite, but human spiritual agency, is what we seek to 
know. What is the kind of activity which man may 
exert, and what is the field on which it may be mani- 
fested ? This is essential in the enquiry for his capa- 
bility to reach the end of his being. 

Nature is working in him, and upon him, and were he 
only nature, he must obey her currents, and float as the 
stream should carry him. He is not only nature ; he is 
supernatural. In his spiritual being he has a law of 
worthiness, and he may hold on to this imperative which 
awakes in his own spirit, and resist and beat back all the 
appetites which awake in his animal nature. He is not 
held in necessity to the bondage of the flesh ; the alter- 
native is open, whether he take it or not, to crush and 
keep the flesh at the foot-stool, and make it to serve and 
not to rule the spirit. Spiritual causality is above all 
natural efficiency. If it may not be able to hold muscular 
resistance against the powers of nature, it can still wholly 
exclude nature from its own sphere, and keep its own 
end, and hold itself steadfast to it, in spite of all the 
happiness or suffering which nature can give. 

Man is, therefore, an agent who has the capacity of 
will in liberty, and is thus endowed with free causality. 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 377 

To the question, Why does man choose between duty 
and appetite ? the proper answer is, that he has both 
ends in his own being, the law of happiness as end of the 
animal and the law of worthiness as end of the spiritual 
being, and he must make his election. He must take 
one, and he cannot take both, and he is thus shut up to 
the necessity of choosing between them. And to the 
question, Why does he choose thus ? Why take happi- 
ness as end against his spiritual worthiness ? or, why 
change from one to the other ? the proper answer is, 
that with full avoidability, the conditions within and with- 
out give a ground of certainty which it will be. Taking 
the whole being, animal and spiritual ; the clearness of 
the perception and the excitability of the feeling, and the 
outer motives that come before him ; there may, in these, 
be a ground of certainty which he will choose, and what 
permanent disposition he will form, though at the time 
there was an alternative, and thus a choice and avoida- 
bility in reference to the end chosen. When the dispo- 
sition has already been made, that adds itself as a con- 
ditional ground of certainty for perpetuated choice of the 
same end, other things without and within remaining the 
same. With this given strength of disposition, and all 
else belonging to the being ; a full knowledge of all the 
outer motives, and direct spiritual influences that may 
act upon him, may give a ground of certainty in refer- 
ence to his change of permanent disposition. The con- 
ditions are not natural causes, nor at all excluding the 
capacity of his own free causality, but they give the cer- 
tainty which end the free spiritual cause will take in the 

32* 



378 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

full alternatives of worth and want, duty and happiness. 
The spirit is supernatural cause, and its conditions are 
not themselves causes making the spirit's agency a causa 
causata, but in such conditions, the spirit truly originates 
a choice, and goes out to one when that was avoidable 
and a full alternative was open. 

We here regard only the capacities of the mind as 
agent, and leave entirely to revealed theology the whole 
ground of determining the certainty of perpetuated 
depravity ; the fact of original sin ; and the interposi- 
tion of Divine Grace to radically change the disposition 
and sanctify all the spiritual affections. These revealed 
doctrines will be in full accordance with the conscious 
facts of the human mind, but they will take these facts 
as already given, and assume the psychology without at 
all attempting to teach it. It may be legitimate to care- 
fully deduce from the theological dogma, what is the 
assumed psychological fact : but quite surely, no scriptural 
doctrine will contradict the fact of avoidability in all 
responsible agency. There are, still, some direct objec- 
tions made to the fact of such agency in liberty and 
which require a full and fair consideration. This we 
now undertake. 

Section IV. State and answer fairly the pro- 
minent OBJECTIONS TO LIBERTY. 

1. Obj. Like causes alivays produce like effects. — 
The force of this objection is, that by an invariable law 
of causality, its action is uniform in like circumstances, 
and acting in the same conditions must ever produce the 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 379 

same effects. This law must hold in the mental world, 
as well as the physical, and we are not thus to suppose 
that any mental acts can be different under the same 
conditions. 

If there is nothing above nature, this objection is sound, 
for past all contradiction, physical causes operate alike 
in the like conditions. But if nature is subject to the 
control of a supernatural, then must there somewhere be 
a causality that is not itself caused by a higher efficiency, 
and which truly originates events from itself. If this 
supernatural cause has an ultimate rule of right in its 
own being, it is not only more than physical efficiency, 
but more also than pure spontaneity, since it conditions 
itself in its own ethical demands, and originates its effects 
intelligently and morally, and thus contingently and not 
necessarily. Such causality is not thing, but person, and 
as absolved from all causality above him, and all impera- 
tive except what is found within him, he is the absolute, 
spiritual Jehovah. 

Just so far as man's spirituality reaches, he too is per- 
son, and possesses the capacity of origination in liberty. 
His moral acts are not the product of a natural causality 
necessitating them with no alternative, but are his own 
originations, on occasion of both the impulse of appetite 
and the obligations of duty ; and which of these he takes 
is at his own responsibility, for the open way to the other 
made the taking of this avoidable. 

We need not, thus, deny a certainty of like results in 
like conditions, but the certainty of natural and spiritual 
causalities are wholly different. Nature has no capa- 



380 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

bility of origination from itself, and all its causes are 
themselves caused by an efficiency back of their own 
acting, and have thus no alternative ; but spiritual caus- 
ality is out of, and above, all nature's causes, and may 
begin action in itself and thus truly originate, and not 
that its acts shall be caused and thus necessarily deter- 
mined by nature. How certain soever it may be, in 
reference to any action, what it shall be from its occa- 
sions ; those occasions do not cause it to be, and thus do 
not exclude avoidability. 

2. Obj. Then all means are potverless. — If the 
spirit can begin action in resistance to nature, then no 
matter what motives are presented, nor what means are 
used, the spirit can counteract them and the will go 
against them, and thus nullify all their efficiency. 

True, all means are powerless, since they are not effi- 
cient causes operating on the spirit, and themselves caus- 
ing the acts which come from it ; else would the spirit be 
subjected to nature, and all its acts would be unavoid- 
able, because grounded in necessity. But not powerless 
in this sense, that they give occasion for spiritual action, 
and throw T a moral influence upon the spirit in the direc- 
tion to a given action. Whether of the appetite towards 
happiness, or of the imperative towards worthiness, they 
are inducements in one direction, and hindrances in the 
other direction ; and may be a ground of certainty which 
direction will be taken ; but inasmuch as they are not 
physical causes, themselves causing the spirit to act, they 
constitute no natural inability to an alternative, and at 
the highest are truly avoidable. They have no power to 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 381 

make the spirit to be nature ; they have influence which 
may give the certainty what a supernatural spirit will do. 

3. Obj. It denies that every event must have its 
cause. — Here are acts of the spirit which are not con- 
nected in any efficiency with their antecedents ; these 
antecedents may be of any kind, and they do not make 
their consequents to be after their kind; the antecedents 
do not cause the consequents, and thus the consequents 
are without cause. 

Yes, the spiritual act is without cause in this, that it 
is not an effect from any of nature's causes. No antece- 
dent in nature is its immediate antecedent, but it origin- 
ates in a source wholly supernatural. It is wholly a new 
thing put into nature which does not come out of nature. 
Nature gets so much new, which was not in it before. 
All her consequents are only changes of what perma- 
nently has been, but the spiritual act is no change of 
what was in nature already. Still the spiritual act is 
not without cause. It does not come up out of a void. 
Its proximate antecedent, and thus its immediate cause, 
is the spirit itself. Nothing out of the spirit, and espe- 
cially nothing back of the spirit in the realm of nature, 
has caused it ; the spirit itself has originated it, and 
henceforth that event, whatever it may be doing in 
nature, belongs to the spirit, and can nowhere find for 
itself another author. 

4. Obj. This cuts off all spiritual action from the 
possibility of foreknowledge. — The act is contingent and 
may be avoided ; it has no necessary connection to any 
thing that now is in nature ; it may therefore be avoided, 



382 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS EYD. 

and nothing that now is can determine that it will not be 
avoided ; it is thus impossible to be foreknown. 

True, it is not now given in anything yet within nature, 
and cannot thus be foreknown by looking through any 
successive changes in nature ; but this does not deny that 
the Absolute Spirit may have the certainty of it. Must 
God foreknow, only as he can look through the necessary 
sequences in nature ! Yea, it does not deny but affirms, 
that any spirit, which might know all the inner and outer 
occasions in which the agent shall be, might find a ground 
of certainty in these very facts. These occasions will not 
cause the spiritual event, but may give a ground of cer- 
tainty that what is in itself wholly avoidable yet will not 
be avoided. This is always the only ground of moral 
certainty, and yet with our limited means of knowing the 
occasions, we often trust the highest interests on our 
convictions of certainty what free agents will do ; a per- 
fect knowledge of all the circumstances might give per- 
fect certainty which alternative would be taken. 

5. Obj. Such free origination is inconceivable. — It 
supposes a causality which can go out one way or another, 
and that* there is nothing back of it causing it to go in 
either, and that thus it must go the way it does for no 
cause or reason whatever. This is the absurdity of 
choosing without choice, and is inconceivable. 

It is admitted, and affirmed, that it is inconceivable by 
the logical understanding. A liberty in physical causa- 
tion is an absurdity. On one side, we cannot conceive 
that the causality can have an alternative, for that would 
involve that a conditioned cause might rise above its 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 383 

conditions, and would be the absurdity of action from 
nothing. On the other hand, a will, already determined 
in its cause and going out with no alternative, is the 
absurdity of unavoidable choice. Physical causality can 
have no alternative ; action in liberty can be only with 
an alternative ; and thus an understanding, which can 
only connect by conditions, cannot conceive of a liberty 
in causation. A logical understanding can conceive of 
no beginning, and of course can conceive of no originator. 
But we are obliged by our reason to demand a first, and 
thus to attain a conception of an author w T ho has no cause 
before him conditioning either his being or acting, but in 
whom action originates. This is the very conception of 
spiritual being ; an entirely supernatural existence ; a 
being not bound in nature, but competent to originate 
uncaused by nature ; and till the reason gets this concep- 
tion, entirely distinct from all the efficiences in nature, 
it knows neither a God nor a soul, and must confine all 
things within the linked succession of a series, to which it 
can give neither an origin nor a consummation. Liberty 
is a necessary attribute of spiritual being, and is fully 
conceived in an existence that can hold on to a law of 
duty within itself, against any end of action from without 
itself. It lifts the conception at once out of nature to 
that which can work against nature, and is both self- 
action and self-law. 

Such we must conceive to have been the creative act 
of God. It must have originated in himself, and gone 
out self-directed ; for any conception of previous condi- 
tioning, that made the creative act to be, and to be such 



384 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

as it was, would demand a necessitated series of condi- 
tions running up in the bosom of the Creator without an 
original. The same conception of agency, as an endow- 
ment by God, originating acts within the finite sphere of 
man's efficiency, is both possible and actual. 

6. Obj. All analogy is opposed to it. — All the causes 
in nature are conditioned in some higher causality, and 
go out into effect without an alternative, and thus from 
analogy we should conclude that it is so with mind, and 
that all its acts have their previous determining causes. 

To this it might readily be answered, that analogy is 
of no force against a matter of fact. Where a fact can 
not be brought within experience and thus to the test of 
consciousness, a fair argument from analogy is legiti- 
mate, but conscious experience cannot allow itself to be 
contradicted by any analogical argument. But were 
analogy admissible, we should derive from it the strongest 
support in favor of action in liberty. No physical caus- 
ality is held at all responsible. It lies confessedly outside 
of the entire sphere of ethical activity, and can be sub- 
jected to no imperative constraints ; it may, therefore, 
at all times be conditioned in its antecedents, and be 
doomed to work on without an alternative. But spiritual 
agency is responsible agency, and on this account is 
excluded from conditions of all physical causation and 
all analogical deductions therefrom, and demands just 
this asiencv of free origination and alternative election. 

7. Obj. All surprise for the most rash and unreason- 
able conduct is wholly to ithout foundation. — All spiritual 
action is contingent, and thus wholly avoidable, and may 



THE MIND AS AN AGENT. 385 

just as well be against reason as with it, and even against 
interest as for it ; thus there is no ground for expecting 
one act rather than another, and no occasion for being 
surprised at any man's action. 

But, occasions for action are necessary to all free causa- 
tion, and these occasions give inducements or hindrances 
to the act, and may supply a ground of certainty what the 
action will be, though they do not fix it in unavoidable 
necessity ; certainly then, these moral occasions may 
furnish strong grounds for expecting the act, and reason- 
able surprise if not exerted, or if some quite different 
action be put forth. But this objection may much more 
forcibly be retorted upon the objector himself. With him 
all is made unavoidable in the previous conditions. As 
the case is, there is no alternative ; one event alone can 
be. All surprise at the event must thus be wholly 
from ignorance. I should feel no more surprised at any 
human conduct than at the bursting of a steam-boiler. 
Neither could have been otherwise in the conditions, and 
the surprise is alike in both, viz. ignorance of the reason 
why they could not help it. But actually, my surprise 
for the human conduct is, why the man did not help it. 



as 



CHAPTER V. 



THE COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY OF THE HUMAN MIND 
TO ATTAIN THE END OE ITS BEING. 

The end of animal nature is happiness ; the end of spirit- 
ual being is worthiness ; and as man is both animal and 
spiritual, he has both of these ends for his attainment. 
Speculatively, it might be held as true, that the attain- 
ment of either, completely, is incompatible with itself 
except in the attainment of both. It may be presumed 
that the animal nature will be unhappy in the debasing 
of the spirit, and that the spirit will feel an indignity in 
yielding to any uncompensated unhappiness in the ani- 
mal. So, also, ethically considered, it might be argued 
that providential allotments should make the most worthy, 
to be the most happy. But all speculation aside, expe- 
rience will not be competent to determine, in all cases, 
where the greatest ultimate happiness can be gained ; 
and every man will find himself in circumstances, w T here 
he can maintain his spiritual worthiness only by sacrific- 
ing animal happiness ; and in all such cases, the conscious 
conviction is, that the worthiness should be maintained 
whether the sacrifice in happiness be ever compensated 
hereafter, or not. The ultimate end of man is the integ- 
rity of his spirit at the hazard of whatever loss to his 
gratification, and he may cheerfully leave the end of hap- 
piness to its own issue, if he has kept himself faithful to 



COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 387 

the end of worthiness. So to dispose all a man's agency 
as to be most worthy of his spiritual acceptance, is to 
have a righteous disposition ; and permanently to main- 
tain such a disposition, is the end of his being. 

The great mass of mankind reverse this order entirely, 
and live for happiness, not for spiritual worthiness ; and 
thus sacrifice the end of their being. Yet this perver- 
sion of the highest law of existence, and thus a depraving 
of the race, is everywhere connected with the conviction 
of personal demerit in it, and personal responsibility for 
it, and thereby a manifest competency to avoid such per- 
petuated depravity, and that the man put and keep him- 
self within the claims of his spirit. And yet, with all 
this competency manifest in the conscious obligation and 
responsibility, there is also the consciousness of irresolu- 
tion to break away from this bondage, and of so suc- 
cumbing in the spirit to the domination of appetite as 
proves also an impotency to regain the lost dominion, and 
to bring the body under. This conscious competency 
and conscious impotency to the same thing, exist as oppo- 
site facts, at the same time, in the same man. It is the 
great moral paradox in human nature, and can never be 
solved by any ignoring or eliminating of either element, 
but must somehow be harmonized by admitting the existr 
ence of both. What has now been gained is sufficient 
to put these contradictory facts in a light, which shows 
them to stand to each other in true consistency. 



388 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

Section I. Man is naturally competent to 
gain the end of his being. — He is capable of deter- 
mining his highest law. — The inner witness of what is 
due to the dignity of his spiritual being secures the per- 
petual working of a conscience, excusing or accusing. 
In the light of his own spirit man knows what exalts and 
what debases him ; what sustains his true dignity, and 
what degrades him ; and in this alone he is a law to him- 
self. When no outward authority promulgates a positive 
commandment, he has the law written on his heart ; and 
where positive laws are imposed, they must be brought 
home to his conscience, and in the light of his own spirit 
he must see that disobedience to them is a reproach and 
dishonor to him, or their sanctions can have no moral 
obligation. He needs nothing more than this rational 
insight into his own being, and in all conditions the law 
is legible. 

His appetites crave ; and where no claim of his spiritual 
being is infringed, he may virtuously gratify them, and 
to just the degree that the worthiness of his spirit will 
permit. Where the clear estimate of highest happiness 
gives a plain dictate of prudence, and nothing else comes 
up as a directory ; in the light of his own spirit he will at 
once read his duty in this perception of utility, for his 
spirit would itself be dishonored, hi bringing his animal 
nature to endure needless suffering or privation. Mere 
prudence is thus itself made a virtue. When others may 
be more happy by his self-sacrifice, the spirit will see in 
itself that its own true dignity is exalted in such self- 
denial; and thus, when only kindness to others is contem- 



COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 389 

plated, the benevolence is seen to be a duty, and becomes 
a virtue because it adorns the spirit. But when, in any 
condition, the wants of animal happiness for himself or 
for others — the dictates of personal happiness or of social 
kindness — come in conflict with what is due to the rational 
spirit ; then, the true dignity of the man is secured only 
in sacrificing both his own and other's happiness to his 
spiritual worth, and it becomes a virtue to be severe 
against his own flesh, and to close his ear to all the 
pleadings of pity for others. And when some positive 
claim is enforced from the authority of the Absolute 
Spirit, requiring prompt obedience without consulting 
any other want or claim whatever, the human spirit 
knows that its own dignity is maintained and exalted by 
implicit and unquestioning obedience. 

There is no place where the spirit may not see the 
bearing of any action upon its own worthiness, and where, 
thus, the law that binds it may not be adequately appre- 
hended. It is not necessary to ascend to heaven, nor to 
descend to the abyss ; for the law is nigh to every man, 
and speaks out from the conscious imperatives awakening 
within his own spirit. 

Man is competent to obey this law. — The human mind 
has all the capabilities necessary for knowing not only, 
but also for doing every duty. There may be strong 
conflicts of appetite and impulsive passion against the 
strict demands which the purity and integrity of the spirit 
imposes, and all the occasions and soliciting conditions of 
nature may seem to lie temptingly open to the indulgence 
of animal desire ; but his virtue is found in the manly 

33* 



390 THE COMPETENCY OP MIND TO ITS £Ni/. 

valor that beats back, and brings under, these unruly 
appetites, and which puts and keeps them in subjection 
to the intrinsic excellency that belongs to man's spiritual 
constitution. And this spiritual activity and energy is 
always present in the very being of the spirit itself, and 
the requisite control of the most turbulent passion can 
only be lost in the neglect to watch and suppress its sud- 
den impulses. The contest with any single appetite may 
long last, and the warfare with all animal propensities 
may hold on through life, but the restraint for the hour 
is the victory for that hour, and the triumph is as per- 
petual as the prolonged ascendancy of the good will ; and 
this may be effectual in restraining as long as there is a 
body to keep under and bring into subjection. 

The right and authority, the throne and scepter, the 
executive force and prerogative are all the possession of 
the spirit, and it must be in treachery to its own sove- 
reignty, if it lay them by, or give them over into the 
power of the enemy, and yield to the usurpation of any 
lust. In the contempt of every gratification, and the 
defiance of every torture that nature can get or feel, the 
spirit of the man can, as it should, hold itself steadfast 
in its own integrity, and go down to death with its high 
end and purpose unrenounced and inviolate. 

When wrongly disposed, it is competent to change 
the disposition, and take agdin the end for which exist- 
ence is given. — We are not concerned here with any 
grounds of certainty that the depraved disposition will 
or will not be changed, nor with any speculation or reve- 
lation how the once righteous disposition became perverse 



COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 391 

and depraved ; but that in the depravity of the spirit, it 
is still competent to itself to renounce the wrong end 
towards which it has disposed its activity, and return to 
the true end of its being, and thus re-assert its dominion 
over those appetites under which it has slavishly been in 
bondage. Though the man has made the end, for which 
the brute lives, his end, and even put the immortal ener- 
gies of his spirit in active chase after happiness, so that 
he pursues gratification as no animal can ; never satia- 
ted ; never resting ; yet has he not thereby become the 
mere animal. Giving in to nature, and subjecting him- 
self to serve nature as he does, yet has he not at all lost 
his supernatural being. He is rational spirit still, and 
well knows, and sometimes keenly feels, the deep degra- 
dation of his soul in living so beneath the intrinsic excel- 
lency which still belongs to it. The rational has most 
absurdly bent in servitude to the animal ; the spirit has 
most unnaturally fixed its end in nature ; but the reason 
sees the absurdity, and the spirit feels the indignity, and 
hence the wretched man cowers in shame and guilt before 
the upbraidings of his own conscience. He knows the 
alternative is open : the perpetuation of his shame and 
guilt is avoidable : that if he persist in his baseness, it 
will not be nature holding him down under any form of 
necessity, but that his spirit freely stays, as it voluntarily 
went down, in the place of its degradation. Every hour's 
delay, every fresh act of sensuous gratification, brings 
down another stroke of the whip of scorpions ; for he is 
choosing carnal happiness, when he might be, and ought 



892 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

to be, aspiring after, and reaping, the immortal dignities 
and honors of his spiritual birth-right. 

In many things he knows he is linked into the succes- 
sions of nature, and that the connections of the antece- 
dents and consequents are indissoluble ; but not in the 
taking of the end for which he lives, nor in the perpetua- 
tion of that perverse and guilty disposition which is 
turned to folly. That is his work, and not nature's, nor 
God's. Nothing perpetuates it, but the perpetual free 
action of the spirit. But for him it had not been begun ; 
only by him can it be perpetuated ; and the responsibility 
is on him that it cease immediately. No matter how 
strong the tempting inducements without ; no matter how 
ready the consenting appetites within; the spirit must 
willingly take, or it is not defiled by them ; and it must 
willingly persist, or its guilt is not perpetuated in them. 
The worth and the reward are in the spirit's own resist- 
ance to these forbidden indulgences, and the battle and 
the victory is in meeting and treading down every lust. 
No matter how stubborn and severe the contest; the 
obstinacy of the foe gives more sublimity to the battle, 
and more dignity to the triumph ; and the very occasion 
for so heroic a contest, is also an opportunity for so glori- 
ous a victory. Within the entire domain of the spiritual, 
the will reigns sole sovereign, and nothing forces it to 
serve the flesh ; nor, when it has basely been doing it, 
does anything, without the spirit itself, bind it in its pri- 
son-house. It has no natural inability ; it comes within 
no necessities of nature ; with no hesitation or equivoca- 
tion, we say that the spirit disposed on happiness should 



COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 393 

avoid, yea, is competent to avoid the perpetuated guilt, 
and stand again disposed on the end of its own worthiness. 

Section II. Man is morally impotent to gain 
the end of His BEING.— Universal observation estab- 
lishes the sad fact that man is depraved from the first. 
With all that is tender, trusting, and amiable in child- 
hood, still the innocence of youth is only comparative. 
The child is not so stubborn and hardened in vice as is 
the old transgressor. But when the strict rule of ethical 
obligation is applied, that the whole spiritual activity 
should be permanently disposed to the end of worthiness, 
and not of happiness ; that the animal nature should be 
utterly subject, and the spiritual in man completely reg- 
nant ; we do not find either in youth or age that the mass 
of mankind can sustain such a test. The end of gratifica- 
tion, in some form, is universal, and it is only in very spe- 
cial cases that we can affirm " the law in the members" 
is rigidly held subordinate to " the law of the mind." So 
soon as we can ascertain by its working the disposition 
of the man, it is found that his spirit has already turned 
to seek happiness, and has become delinquent to the end 
of its highest worthiness. Nature as truly as Revelation, 
affirms that " all have gone out of the way." 

Now we cannot, in psychology, help out our ignorance 
of the source of such universal depravity, by any state- 
ments from revelation ; and can only say, the history of 
the race evinces, so high as we can trace it, that humanity 
is in a fallen condition, and that it is not, and has never 
been, supremely disposed to attain the grand end of a 



394 THE COMPETENCY OF MIXD TO ITS END. 

spiritual life. If there are exceptions, they have always 
been under such conditions as to prove the general rule 
of depravity. Inasmuch as this perverseness of disposi- 
tion appears from the first, and its origination is truly 
back of all personal recollection in each case, we are left 
without any explanation of it from experience. If this 
original disposing act of the spirit was in consciousness, 
the memory has not so retained it that it can at any 
subsequent time be brought up for careful and intelligent 
reflection. The ground of this certainty of human delin- 
quency cannot, thus, be made subject to human investi- 
gation through any experience. From our conscious 
conviction of guilt and responsibility that we have now 
such a disposition, it will be safe to assume as a theory, 
that at no point is such a disposition unavoidable ; that it 
is not, and does not continue, from any natural inability 
and because there is no open alternative to it ; but that 
it is ever the spirit's own, and solely and righteously at 
its responsibility. All the impotency, therefore, at the 
first, and at any subsequent period, that the spirit should 
not take on and perpetuate such a perverse disposing, is 
of a moral kind, and from within the spirit itself, and not 
forced upon it in any necessary connections of nature. 
The first instant of such disposing was as truly the spirit's 
own, as at any subsequent moment of its existence, and 
we can no more say, it could not avoid sinning at the 
first, or avoid being sinful, than we can at any point of 
subsequent activity. But, that there is a moral impo- 
tency in each case, at the first disposing, may well be 
assumed from the universality of the result ; and we can 



COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 395 

only leave it on such proof, since we cannot carry up any 
conscious recollection to the examination of what was 
then our experience. 

We are, however, much more competent to examine 
the fact of our impotency to break off from all depravity, 
and to stand out, in all our daily experience, in the full 
perfection of having attained and kept the great end for 
which our spiritual being is given to us. This change 
has not been made, and when the man is summoned to 
it, and even when, he essays to effect it, there is a sense 
in which he honestly says, 'I am unable to do it.' Let 
us endeavor to know precisely what this impotency is. 

The gratification of animal appetite is agreeable, and 
the immediate impulse of the whole animal being is 
towards happiness, on every offered occasion. Were 
man only animal, it might be said on all occasions of pre- 
sented happiness, that he has no alternative to the going 
out after the highest degree. He could not help going 
out after the strongest desire ; and in this we should 
mean that there was a natural inability. There is no 
alternative to the end of happiness, and that which causes 
the taking of happiness at all must, thus unhindered by 
any alternative, cause the taking of the highest offered 
degree. If denial in one direction will give greater hap- 
piness in another, then denial is on that account most 
desirable, and the impulse must be accordingly. To the 
animal, prudence will be as impulsive as appetite, and 
the strongest impulse cannot find its alternative in any 
lower degree. All is really the same thing ; happiness ; 
and the animal is naturally unable to hold himself back 



396 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

from it. There is no disposing, as of a permanent state 
of spiritual activity, or will ; there is only the inclination 
of constitutional nature. We cannot here say anything 
about moral impotency ; the conception is wholly irrele- 
vant. The whole inability is grounded in necessity. 

But the man is not all animal. He feels the impulse 
to happiness, and, in the consciousness of what is due to 
his spirit, he feels also the obligation to consult first this 
ethical claim of highest worthiness. Here is an end of 
wholly another kind, and which will not admit of compar- 
ison with happiness in degrees. No degree of happiness 
can give moral worthiness ; and no satisfaction of appetite 
can fulfil an imperative claim. There is in this ethical 
end, a complete alternative to all happiness, even the 
highest and the eternal. It is one thing to be worthy of 
spiritual approbation, and quite another thing to be enjoy- 
ing the applications to every appetite ; and no matter 
how high the appeal to animal nature, while the mere 
brute cannot resist, the human being can. He has that 
within his reach which he can sieze as a complete and 
sufficient countercheck to the strongest desire for happi- 
ness. A natural inability it cannot be, which keeps the 
man from renouncing happiness as his end, and taking 
that of spiritual worthiness. 

The impotency is wholly found within the spirit itself, 
and is an exclusion of all hope of change, left to the 
spirit's own agency. It has given itself to sensual good, 
and discarded the ethical good, and thus the very agent 
that should dispose itself to its true dignity, has sold 
itself in debasement to the lower nature, and voluntarily 



COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 397 

put on the bonds of appetite. How, now, release itself 
from the bondage which it loves and chooses ? How 
choose anew against its own choice ? How lift itself out 
of the gulf into which its own impulses and activity thrust 
itself- down ? Its determined activity is in one direction, 
how shall the same determiner of activity put the agency 
in another direction ? Is it said that the spirit may take 
to itself new influences and motives, and by their means 
change its direction? But what other motives can it take, 
than such as it already has, and has rejected ? And if 
there were others within its reach, what hope that it will 
reach and use them, when it does not wish their interven- 
tion nor the end to which they tend ? How use what is 
repugnant, to attain an end already discarded ? How 
set itself to seek what it does not wish to find ? and this, 
that it may turn itself about in a direction it does not 
wish to go? How, then, is the carnal disposition, which 
is simply the spiritual activity disposed on animal gratifi- 
cation, to change itself to the spiritual disposition, which 
is simply the spiritual activity disposed on the end of its 
own worthiness ? If the carnal mind be left alone in its 
own action, it is most hopeless that it will ever change 
itself to spiritual-mindedness. 

But is not then this impotency truly a natural inabili- 
ty ? Does not the spirit subject itself to the necessity 
of nature, by subjecting itself to the service of nature ? 
Having wholly gone out after the sense, has it not thus 
abolished the alternative of a return to its own worth ? 
Is not depravity, henceforth, unavoidable to itself? It 
would certainly so be, if by disposing itself on an ultimate 

34 



398 THE COMPETENCY OF MIND TO ITS END. 

end, and thereby attaining a radical disposition, it 
became only a physical cause, and could now only go 
out in efficiency as it was caused to go out by some 
agency ah extra to itself. As it has disposed itself, so 
it must perpetuate itself; and nature might as well turn 
itself back upon its own course, as the spirit convert 
itself from the error of its way. It would henceforth be 
nature, and subject to the necessities of nature ; and 
whether the disposition were depraved or righteous, in 
that direction it must so remain. But this would be 
wholly a false conception, and abolish utterly the true 
distinction between natural and moral inability, and iden- 
tify again nature and spirit. 

By subjecting^ itself to the bondage of nature, the 
spirit does not itself become nature. It is itself a free 
causality, and wholly competent to originate action in 
itself, without a cause antecedent to itself causing it to 
act. Whether in a right or a wrong disposition, the 
spirit is still a supernatural existence ; having its law in 
its own being, and competent to steady itself by that 
law against all the impulses of nature. When holy, it is 
competent to renounce the end which makes it holy, 
without the necessity of another and prior efficiency to 
cause it thus to renounce ; and so, when sinful, it is com- 
petent to renounce the end which secures it to be sinful, 
without its being caused thus to renounce. The pecu- 
liarity of its efficiency is by no means lost, whichever 
direction it may have given to its activity. That it has 
a sinful disposition, is still consistent with the conception 
that it is spirit thus sinfully disposing its activity, and 



COMPETENCY AND IMPOTENCY. 399 

not that it is nature moving in a current which a higher 
cause has determined for it. 

This depraved spirit, going out after its appetites and 
not after its duties, has thus the full natural competency 
to originate in itself an act of renunciation of the carnal 
end, and an act of adhesion to the end of its own worthi- 
ness, and may justly be required to " put off the old man, 
and to put on the new man," for this alternative is so 
open to it ; but still, all the attachment to the wrong,' 
and all the repugnance to the right, is there in the carnal 
disposition ; and what hope of its originating the great 
change from spiritual death to spiritual life ? The man 
may, yea, he must say, ' I ought to change ; I am under 
the strongest obligations to my own spirit that I debase 
and degrade it no more ; and thus that I can renew my 
disposition and reform my life.' But he can and must, 
also, say, in another sense, ' I love and choose my carnal 
gratifications ; I hate and reluctate all the claims of the 
spirit that restrain me ; I cannot renounce the happiness 
I love, and choose the restraints I hate.' In the full 
possession of his conscious natural competency, he has as 
full a consciousness of his deep moral impotency. In the 
pressure of these alternatives — on one side the passion- 
ate impulses of appetite, and on the other the stern impe- 
ratives of his own dignity— the bad man may often say 
to his conscience, "hast thou come to torment me before 
my time ;" and the good man may say to his lusts, " 0, 
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death V 9 When the wicked man will do 
evil, the prompting imperatives of his spirit are yet within 



400 THE COMPETENCY OF MINE TO ITS END. 

him; and when the righteous man will do good, the lust- 
ing to evil is still present. Humanity is in self-conflict ; 
the spirit is naturally competent to rein the animal in 
subjection ; and yet it is often morally impotent to put 
on and pull up the curb. 

Thus man is both able and unable to attain the end of 
his being, in holding all his activity wholly to the claims 
of his spiritual nature. But in' this there is neither 
absurdity nor contradiction. He is able not in the same 
sense that he is unable. His ability is a freedom from 
all the coercions and necessities of nature, and his ina- 
bility is a bondage of the spirit itself — self-imposed and 
self-perpetuated. His freedom from all the compulsion 
of nature leaves him wholly responsible, and utterly inex- 
cusable, in his depravity ; and his whole-souled subjec- 
tion to hi3 carnal appetites, and the fixed state of will on 
the end of animal gratification, render it utterly hopeless 
that the same spiritual will, left to its own way, is ever 
about to turn from that which it so loves, and fix anew 
upon that which it so hates. In such a condition, per- 
petuated depravity must have its perpetuated conscious- 
ness of degradation and guilt ; and the recovery of the 
spirit to its original integrity awaits the gracious advent 
of One, who, by a spiritual regeneration, may seek and 
save the lost. 



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